House Four in TH Brown’s In Residence series
Kristin’s home in Kingsford, in Sydney’s south-east, is not a house built for show. It is a house built around the life she actually lives and that is exactly what makes it so compelling.
She has lived here for twenty-five years. In that time, the house has held work, family, memory, collecting and quiet daily ritual. It has also held patience. For twenty-five years, Kristin saved for the renovation that would finally allow the home to better support the way she wanted to live in it.
That long relationship with the house matters. This is not a home imposed all at once. It has been shaped slowly, through living, noticing, collecting and deciding what truly belongs.
Kristin is very clear that she is “not a party kind of person.” But this is not a solitary house. It is surrounded by stories, memories and moments family pieces carried forward, neighbours she knows well, a guest room ready for family and visitors, and a life lived closely with the street and suburb around it. The house holds people in quieter ways.
That feeling runs through every room. There are things that belonged to someone else first a family chair she sat on as a child, vintage furniture, inherited objects and market finds. And then there is Kristin’s own creative eye: Indigenous artwork gathered over time, art glass that began with her grandmother, metal cranes in the back garden, orange against blue, and a home full of choices that feel entirely personal.
The renovation opened the rear of the house, bringing an outdoor deck, laundry and toilet into the main footprint and creating a lighter, more useful living space. The kitchen sits at the centre of that transformation. Functional, yes but also full of character. The blue cabinetry nods to the original blue trim of the house, while orange became the non-negotiable contrast.
“Orange is the contrast of blue,” Kristin says. “It has to be orange.”
That certainty is also what led her to TH Brown.
Kristin had tried to find vintage stools the way she had found so many other pieces in the home, but the originals were too tall for the kitchen and finding three that matched was nearly impossible. The TH Brown Martelle Bar Stool solved both the practical and visual problem. It gave her the form she wanted in the correct lower height, and once the height was right, the orange leather upholstery became essential. Swatched back to the house and her Elite dining chairs, the stools sit exactly as she imagined bright, tactile and perfectly at home within a house shaped by memory, colour and Australian design.
And that is what makes Kristin’s home such a strong House Four in In Residence.
It is not simply a renovated California bungalow. It is a home shaped by memory, colour, instinct and daily life where old pieces, new additions and personal stories sit easily side by side
Explore more from our In Residence series.
