Sweet inspiration

The livingroom of shabby chic house belonging to Kristelle and Ben Thomsen. Photo / Babiche Martens

Ben Thomsen has the best comeback for his male mates who dare to wonder out loud how a real man can possibly live in a white house.

"I just say to them 'and what does your home look like?"' Their response? 'Not half as cool as this!"'

That's after these guys have got past the fact that they don't have to turn up with sheets and towels to protect the white chairs and couch. "I think they're serious, too," says Ben. He's got a few words also for anyone who assumes this luscious home in white, silver and pink is most likely to be a "girly" girl's pad, rather than the home of a young couple.

"I don't think its 'girly girly' at all," says Ben. "It's great. It's homely. It's cosy and I just love coming back here at night."

Welcome to the home he shares with wife Kristelle in Mt Albert, Auckland. Kristelle is a Clinique business manager in Westfield St Lukes.

Ben, who is on the home straight of a law degree, works in the banking industry.

He's also the cook in this household of three, which includes one flatmate, also called Ben.

Whipping up a feast for friends, picking fresh produce from their small garden and proudly sharing a home that is his wife's signature "shabby chic" style makes Ben a truly happy man.

Better than that, he's cool among the white, the silver and the pink accents in the cottage-for-rent Kristelle found on Trade Me and just had to have because of the chandelier in the lounge.

"It was meant to be," says Kristelle, who unpacked all their mementoes, wedding gifts, new furniture and well-travelled, refurbished second-hand items in one day.

The pink pieces among them are an accent-only these days and a fair measure of where Ben and Kristelle are in their relationship.

"I've toned it down," says Kristelle.

"I used to have a lot more pink and florals around me. We've moved more towards white and silver which feel more fresh and sophisticated.

"It also reflects how much our tastes have evolved and, quite by coincidence, they are Clinique's colours that I am surrounded with at work too."

Both aged 27 - married for two years, together for 12 years - they have discovered what they both like, how well everything from wood to wicker and wrought iron looks with a fresh coat of white paint, and how much better all of the above look in the purer, more contemporary tones of white than the creamy, yellow-based whites that Kristelle first dabbled in.

The neutrals aside, pink has been there from the beginning. Kristelle came into Ben's life with baggage of the prettiest kind - the colour pink.

Ever the home-maker, Kristelle did flirt with a few other soft pastels along the way, including baby blue and teal green, but they never quite stole her heart the way pink has done. Perhaps not surprisingly, Ben found himself negotiating the seemingly non-negotiable along the way.

From the perspective of the girl who chose pink for her wedding day attire, setting up home as a couple has been quite reasonably about having "a few more rules about pink".

With a resigned grin, Ben reckons he ought to have been a bit tougher in their verbal pre-nuptial agreement not to buy anything more in pink. "I should have said 'no more pink. Full stop'. I'm happy with the pink we've got, but I'm not necessarily up for too much more," he explains. What he's groaning about is the gifts that jumped through the loophole.

A little subterfuge on Kristelle's part didn't count either as she began sneaking the odd pink piece out of the cupboard as they settled into this house.

"The artistic licence is all Kristelle's," says Ben. "I just sit and enjoy it all." Actually he's got himself a bit to blame for agreeing, 10 years ago, to carry home a wooden/chicken mesh cabinet that a taxi driver refused to deliver.

There was also the lamp that Kristelle carried home on a bus, and a table Ben remembers bringing home ... But it was that cabinet that now displays Kristelle's late Nan's china set in the corner of this lounge that started it all.

It didn't stay bright yellow for long either. Her choice of a creamy/white was the key to personalising the only furniture they could afford.

"The boys called our flat 'the tribute to The Warehouse'," says Kristelle. "It wasn't what we wanted to buy, but it was all we could afford at the time and it got me thinking about how we could do better with what we had."

With a creativity inherited from both her parents, Kristelle began sourcing second-hand items.

"It was Mum who taught me to appreciate the beauty of wrought iron. She has a great sense of style and she was a huge influence on me."

Try as they might, Kristelle and Ben have never been able to embrace minimalism. Kristelle tried it years ago on her mantelpiece. It lasted 10 minutes. "I couldn't stand it." Moving in here, Ben was adamant about having appliances-only on the kitchen bench. "That lasted about a week," says Ben.

"It was so boring!" says Kristelle.

The first piece out of the cupboard was Kristelle's pink saucepan. That's cool, he reminds her, as long as he's got space for cutting carrots "and a bit more bench space would be nice".

"Perhaps we might need a smaller chopping board," she suggests. That empty oven hasn't escaped her eye either. Half-joking, she sent Ben a text at work suggesting that those two empty shelves would be ideal for storing her knitwear.

"Ha ha" was his reply. Kristelle arrived home with a cabinet - white of course - that had been installed in their bedroom and neatly stacked before Ben walked through the door.

That furniture item was delivered, not carried home. "We can pay for delivery now," laughs Ben.