House Nine in TH Brown’s In Residence series
A home they made while building a new life
Some homes are permanent.
Others hold you while life is still taking shape.
This one did both.
When Christine and Pete moved from Adelaide to the Gold Coast three years ago, it was not because they had to. Their family was in Adelaide. Their friends were in Adelaide. They had built a good life there. And yet they wanted a change. They wanted a new adventure. They wanted to see what life might look like if they stepped outside everything familiar and tried something different. So they did.
At first, the move was not absolute. They kept their Adelaide home just in case the Gold Coast did not feel right. But over time, that question answered itself. The girls settled. New friendships formed. Communities grew. Adelaide remained beloved, but no longer central in the same way. They have now sold their home there. The Gold Coast is no longer a trial. It is where the next chapter of their life is unfolding.
That is what makes this Robina house so significant.
Because this is not the forever place they were building toward.
It is the rental that held them while they worked out whether the Gold Coast could truly become where they belonged.
And yet, when you walk into the house, it does not feel temporary. It feels settled, warm and deeply lived in. Christine says a home is a feeling in many respects: “the energy in a space, the way you live in it, the things you place around yourself, and the atmosphere you create for the people who enter it.” That belief runs through everything here.
Their parents noticed it immediately when they visited. The family had made the house feel like theirs very quickly. It is easy to see why. There is light. There is greenery. There is room for everyone to be together and separate at once. The sunken lounge draws people in. Christmas has been held here. Friends have stayed here. Parents and siblings have rotated through the guest room. The house has done what the best houses do: it has absorbed the life around it and started to feel inseparable from it.
That feeling is built not only through architecture, but through what Christine and Pete have chosen to bring with them. There are artworks collected from travel, gifts from old friends, family pieces, records, books, and furniture carrying different chapters of their story. Pete’s grandfather made several of the pieces still in the house, including a cabinet and a bookcase. His turntable came with a handwritten note asking him to keep it because he would use it more. Even in a rental, everything feels chosen.
That, perhaps, is why the TH Brown pieces sit so naturally here.
Christine and Pete had already built a life around mid-century design. They loved vintage pieces, but they also knew how hard it is to find new furniture with genuine mid-century integrity. TH Brown offered something different: reissued Australian design with history behind it, made in Adelaide, their hometown, and built to last well beyond the present moment. That mattered to them.
The first TH Brown piece they bought was the Aquarius Coffee Table. For years, they had gone without a proper coffee table in their main living space. But by the time they had moved north, the family had entered a different phase. The children were older. The house could hold more delicate things again. Christine had wanted a TH Brown coffee table for some time, and together they chose the Aquarius. What they loved was its balance: generous without feeling heavy, sculptural without dominating the room, and softened by glass in a way that kept the whole space feeling open. It sits at the centre of the room exactly as a coffee table should.
That purchase also marked something else. For a long time, furniture choices had been shaped by budget, family priorities and practicality. Now, with a little more room to choose differently, they were able to invest in pieces not just for the moment, but for the next fifty years. Pieces their daughters could inherit. Pieces with story, craftsmanship and staying power. Christine has already told the girls exactly that: these are “heirloom pieces” she wants them to understand and keep.
The Danish Bar Stools arrived in that same spirit. When they sold their Adelaide home and committed fully to building their future on the Gold Coast, Christine said to Pete that they should buy something special for the next house. The stools were part celebration, part practical solution, and part statement of who they had become. They solved a need, yes, but they also carried something more enduring: a sense that the family was no longer just making do, but choosing well.
That is what makes this Robina house special.
It was never meant to be forever.
But it became the comfort of home during a very important in-between.
Explore more from our In Residence series.
Photographer - Louise Rocher - The Design Villa
