When Kathy Brown, her
husband, Tony Brown,
and their three nearly
grown children walk up
the wooden staircase onto their first-floor
deck at their Cowrie Lane home, they are
immediately greeted with a rush of salty
sea breeze. The couple bought the traditional
1968 beach house in 2009 as a vacation
getaway from their Davidson, North
Carolina, home.
“We started coming to Wrightsville
30 years ago when we were in college in
Raleigh,” Kathy Brown explains. “We kept
coming back every so often and always
hoped one day to have a beach house. We
considered any beach community we had
ever visited, but Wrightsville Beach just
continued to stack up in every way. There’s
an attitude in Wrightsville and Wilmington
that you don’t find anywhere else and it’s
pretty compelling and endearing.”
Renovations on the house began near
Thanksgiving 2010 and just wrapped
up, turning the one-story classic beach
house into a two-story, five-bedroom and
50
WBM august 2011
four-bathroom getaway. The couple hired
Bryan Humphrey of Bryan Humphrey
Design and Construction after their original
architect in Davidson didn’t work out.
Humphrey became both the architectural
designer and building contractor.
“I couldn’t be here every day,” Brown
says. “So what was great about working with
Bryan is that he did the design work and
then he could also build it, then he was also
on site every day.” Brown says Humphrey is
a craftsman with an eye for design.
“On other projects where you would
remodels and renovations