When Cat Deeley and Patrick Kielty bought their £5million ‘doer-upper’ as part of their homecoming project, they dreamt that it would be their perfect, forever home.After more than a decade living in Los Angeles, where Cat had been the golden girl host of reality TV show So You Think You Can Dance, they’d relocated back to the UK in 2020, excited to build a new life on this side of the Atlantic with their two young sons.The drastic decision was taken following a terrifying incident when Patrick and their eldest son Milo, then four, found themselves in an emergency lock down in an LA shopping mall during a major shooting scare.Cat recalled: ‘They shut down the centre. I got a call from Paddy, saying: “They’re taking us out through the fire exits but nobody can get to their car. If we walk to a junction, can you come and get us?”’She realised she simply couldn’t raise her family in the US.So they moved back to the UK before buying the run-down 1950s property in Hampstead, north London, in 2023, which they planned to transform in what was described as a ‘hardcore passion project’.Helping to fund the plans was Cat’s exciting and lucrative new role, stepping into Holly Willoughby’s shoes in 2024, as the co-host of This Morning, alongside Ben Shephard, for which she’s said to be paid around £600,000 a year.Two years later, however, those dreams – like their marriage and much of the house – are in ruins. Cat Deeley, 49, and Patrick Kielty, 55, have decided to ‘down tools’ on the £5 million house they bought together and put it back on the market – at a considerable personal lossAlmost exactly a year after Cat, 49, and Pat, 55, announced their shock separation, the former couple have decided to ‘down tools’ and put the house back on the market, at a considerable personal loss – and with work nowhere near complete – having never spent a single night there.There was, I’m told, initially something of a battle between the pair over who would take the project on, only for them both to realise that it was not viable to continue alone.Friends say that the house, and the huge headache over what to do with it, had ‘added’ to the issues for the former couple.‘It was with a heavy heart that Cat and Patrick decided to halt the work,’ says one pal. ‘It’s heartbreaking. They put a lot of time into it and had an amazing vision not just for what the house would look like, but that their boys would grow up there.‘Coming back to the UK was a wrench in many ways but having the house, all very California-esque, was something that excited the whole family. It was all supposed to have been so perfect.‘Literally halfway through they’ve downed tools and will sell it in its current state. They didn’t get anywhere close to completing it. To think they put in so much work is devastating. They put blood, sweat and tears into it and it was at the centre of their lives for two years, but in the end it came to nothing.‘Each party initially claimed to want to carry on but doing a house up with someone you have split up with isn’t ideal.‘Given they now have no plan to spend the rest of their lives together, there seemed little point in continuing. In the end they decided to get rid of it.’It is understood they know they are set to lose money. Its current market price is £5.25million – £350,000 more than the £4.9million they paid for it back in 2023, but it’s suggested they spent more than that on the work.The property, which is on the edge of picturesque Hampstead Heath, and on the same road as two homes former One Direction singer Harry Styles is renovating to make a single super-mansion, is listed with Savills estate agent.It is described as offering ‘exclusivity and tranquillity whilst being within just four miles of London’s West End’. It is said the pair had an amazing vision for what the house would look and hoped their children would grow up there. (Pictured: Proposal that was submitted for planning approval) Friends say that the house (pictured), and the huge headache over what to do with it, had ‘added’ to the issues for the former coupleBut the sales blurb adds that the ‘detached five-bedroom house of c.410 sq metres (4,418sq ft) arranged over two floors’ is in ‘poor condition’.When the Daily Mail visited the house this week, there was no sign of any active building work behind the locked security fencing. With piles of rotting plywood propped against outside walls, and cables strewn on the driveway, it had the air of an abandoned building.Yet, it all began so well for Cat and Pat, who became friends while presenting BBC talent show Fame Academy in the early Noughties. Their eventual romance read like a rom-com plot: they’d been out of touch for years when, in 2012, Pat confessed to colleague Gabby Logan that he still had a soft spot for Cat and she encouraged him to do something about it.So on a whim Pat flew from a pub in Northern Ireland to surprise Cat at her birthday brunch at the Beverly Hills hotel, to profess his love.They were married nine whirlwind months later, in Rome, and the births of their sons Milo and James provided the perfect ending to the story.In fact, the boys were very much in mind when they submitted their building plans for the dream family house to Barnet Council.They included extensive changes to the property’s layout including a double-height open-plan living space, extended bedrooms and terraces, and new additions such as a nanny suite, children’s playroom, his-and-hers dressing rooms, a home bar and an office.In keeping with their plans to recreate an ‘LA feel’, there were also planned alterations to the roof to allow more daylight into the core living areas. They were also factoring in a ‘grander’ entrance hall.The couple were also granted permission for tree removals and excavation work to reshape the rear garden.Cat shared progress on the renovations on Instagram in 2024, posting a video showing a largely demolished interior with the caption: ‘Not much house, lots of air.’ Patrick also regaled Five Live listeners with his own tales on Saturday mornings.Both were excited but were also said to ‘speak very sarcastically’ of what they’d taken on.‘They would joke it would finish them both off,’ said one friend. ‘It didn’t finish them off but it did their marriage.’For, joking aside, friends say the stress of the renovations definitely played a part in the disintegration of their relationship.It had, they say, placed a ‘huge strain’ on what was already a precarious situation.A lot of the work was falling to Cat as Patrick was spending ‘the majority of the week’ in Ireland, where he is the host of RTE’s flagship, the Late Late Show. Their renovation plans, which Cat shared on Instagram, included extensive changes to the property’s layout, such as alternations to the roof to let in more light Since splitting from Patrick, This Morning Host Cat has been seen out socialising with wedding dress designer Charlie Brear as well as handsome movie executive Charlie ColemanThe couple had already endured periods living apart after their snap decision to leave LA meant Cat had a year-long transatlantic commute while she saw out her contract to host So You Think You Can Dance.‘That was hard on Patrick,’ says a source. ‘Cat was living transatlantically, he had the two boys in London.’The permanent move to London signalled a fresh start yet they stunned the showbusiness world, a year ago, when they announced they were splitting up.In a statement issued just days after Cat went off on her summer holidays from This Morning, they said: ‘We have taken the decision to end our marriage and are now separated. There is no other party involved. We will continue to be united as loving parents to our children and would therefore kindly ask for our family privacy to be respected. There will be no further comment.’And indeed, neither party has said anything more about the split, but some who are familiar with the pair suggest all is not as civilised between them as it may seem.There is some suggestion that something ‘seismic’ must have happened ‘suddenly’ as just four months before the announcement, they were still working on their renovations in what has been described to me as a ‘hunky dory fashion’. Perhaps, tellingly, it was around this time, in March 2025, that Patrick’s mother, Mary, died and he travelled back to his home village, Dundrum, in Northern Ireland, for her funeral.He was pictured helping to carry her coffin into the Church of the Sacred Heart, surrounded by friends and family, but Cat, poignantly, was nowhere to be seen. Her PR said she remained at home to be there for her two young children before and after school.But her surprise absence prompted much speculation that it could have been one of the issues that provided the tipping point. Since their split, Cat has been seen out socialising with wedding dress designer Charlie Brear, although they aren’t thought to be anything more than good friends.A fortnight ago it was suggested that Cat enjoyed an ‘intimate date night’ with a handsome movie executive Charlie Coleman at a Lewis Capaldi gig at London’s Hyde Park.An onlooker told a Sunday newspaper that ‘the pair were all smiles, laughing and animatedly chatting’, adding: ‘At one point Charlie touched Cat’s bare back affectionately and she was also tactile with him as they sipped on drinks in paper cups. They seemed very relaxed with each other and shared several jokes.‘She was whispering in his ear and they were bopping to the music.’However, sources connected with the story wrote off any chance of the pair’s night out being romantic, with one saying: ‘They weren’t holding hands or kissing, hardly looked like a date.’Meanwhile, another source told me: ‘He’s not her type.’Patrick still divides his time between London and Ireland, and there have been no signs of any new love interest for him.It’s becoming painfully obvious that Cat’s dreams for a new life in London aren’t the only things that have fallen flat. For, along with the end of her marriage and her dream home, industry insiders note that Cat has hardly been enjoying the success of her predecessor Holly Willoughby.Cat has been lambasted by the programme’s viewers for being ‘too Hollywood’ and having ‘zero chemistry’ with Ben, with whom she now holds the record for the programme’s lowest ever ratings.When Holly and co-host Phillip Schofield anchored the show they would pull in between two and three million viewers. Today Cat and Ben struggle to get 500,000.‘It wasn’t quite what was expected,’ says a source involved with This Morning. ‘Cat was the Hollywood glamour that ITV bosses wanted, but it just hasn’t worked in the way they hoped.’Like the building work in Hampstead, sources at ITV have intimated to me that they could see her role on the programme grinding to a halt some time soon.