From London to the beach bliss of Devonport, Auckland, a returning family discover the reality of their Kiwi life is even better than their rosy memories
Meet & greet
Kate Sumner-Brown (legal recruitment company owner), her husband Kris (senior finance partner), and their daughters, Margaux, eight, and Charlotte, six.
The property
Weatherboard bungalow built in 1926, Devonport, Auckland.
Distance, as they say, makes the heart grow fonder. The old adage is a truth lived by many expat Kiwis, but the luckiest ones get to keep this rosy view long after they return home. Such is the case for Kate and Kris, whose memories of an idyllic Kiwi childhood have been trumped by the charm of their current life, one of barefoot bliss with their two girls in a sunny Devonport weatherboard house that’s within a sandy stone’s throw of the beach.
No place like home
Covid brought many globe-trotting Kiwis back to New Zealand, but for Kate and Kris Sumner-Brown who had spent 13 years in London, it was just one part of a series of events that turned the vague notion of a coming home “someday” into one-way tickets back to Godzone. With a lovely life in London, the family were poised to further cement their ties to Blighty with a move to Surrey, when things went pear-shaped. The day after the sale on their previous house went unconditional, the deal on their new property fell through, leaving the family adrift with only a short time to find a place to live and prompting a discussion about where that new place should be.
“We had always wondered if we should be giving New Zealand a go, so we sat down and had a conversation over a bottle of wine. We woke up the next morning and Kris said, ‘Well, what do you think?’,” says Kate. Covid and remote working meant it was a low-risk time to move (“I can run my business internationally and everyone’s doing everything by Zoom, anyway,” says Kate), so they promptly booked one-way tickets and were back in Aotearoa three weeks later.
The decision was spontaneous, but the couple left themselves plenty of room to go back to the UK if New Zealand wasn’t the blissful idyll they remembered. But they needn’t have worried. “Within a couple of weeks, maybe a month or two, I realised we wouldn’t be moving back to London because New Zealand is uniquely wonderful for raising children,” says Kate.
Waxing lyrical about barefoot walks home from school via the beach, backyard barbecues and the close-knit community they found themselves in, Kate says, “It’s something I’m super grateful to have, but until you leave New Zealand, I don’t think you realise just how incredible this kind of childhood is.”
House hunting
Both Kate and Kris are from the Waikato, but Kate had fallen in love with the village atmosphere and beachside location of Devonport years before, so they concentrated their house search on the Auckland suburb. It wasn’t exactly a breeze, but they finally settled on a home that ticked all of their boxes. The 1926 weatherboard bungalow features bedrooms aplenty and a downstairs studio for guests, a fresh palette of white paint and limed timber floors, and best of all, a glimpse of bright blue water through the living room window. Light floods the rooms during the day, but Kate says the deciding factor was more ephemeral than all of this: “It’s hard to put a finger on why you buy a house, but it just felt nice.”
Team effort
With all of this, the house would tick almost anyone’s boxes, but the greatest gift turned out to be something the couple didn’t think to put on their must-have list: a solid sense of community. They’d been told the street was something special but dismissed it as real-estate spin, until they moved in. “It’s this phenomenal cul-de-sac. We have a WhatsApp group, everyone gets together for a glass of wine at the beach in the summertime, and people help each other out,” says Kate.
A Kiwi community – albeit in a virtual sense – also helped Kate furnish their new home.
Gorgeous furniture and homewares can be found in New Zealand – the stunning homes profiled in these pages are testament to that fact – but, used to the rich offerings of the UK, Kate found sourcing what she wanted required a lot more searching and some insider knowledge. “I knew the chairs in the living room would be seen from the front door and would become a design feature,” says Kate. “I put out on Instagram that I was looking for this particular type of chair. One of my followers got in touch and said there’s a little shop in Hastings that has something very similar.” The Paris chairs from Kindred Road are now the first style statement one sees on walking in the front door.
Modern minimalist
There are plenty of beautiful objects to look at in this house, but what you won’t find here is clutter. Kate’s secret to a minimalist home is a maximalist approach to storage. “I’m a really big fan of minimalism and a lot of what we’ve done in the house is really practical – we put in a lot of storage.” There’s storage under the house for kayaks, buckets and spades, and all of the gear associated with their new beachy lifestyle. Ikea cabinets (from Idiya) give the look of built-ins without the cost, while statement furniture pieces have been chosen as much for their stash space as their good looks.
“I like having a really clear space, it’s so much more calm. And I think the only way you can do that is if you do the boring stuff, like have enough storage for all your things,” says Kate.
Kate’s bright and clean aesthetic also translates to a lot of white – and she’s got some tricks for making this work with small children. An artfully draped throw stops grubby hands from touching the beige sofa; a Bissell spot cleaner keeps upholstery pristine; while hard surfaces, like recycled timber and marble, have been chosen for their ability to disguise scratches, spills and wear.
Future plans
An outsider would say the house is pretty close to perfect the way it is, but Kate hints at renovation plans in their future, designed to put their own mark on the house.
“We will make changes in the future, but in the meantime, we want to style it in a way that makes it feel like we live there and we’re not just passing through.” Essentially, their intention is to create a feeling of permanence. Because here is where they will stay.
These Kiwis have flown home for good.
Words by: Shelley Tustin. Photography by: Babiche Martens.
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