Hi I am in flooring The floor does not have to be water level you have a allowance of 3mm in 1mt or 6mm it 2mt or 9mm in 3mt get the picture The subfloor does have to be hard and smooth But you CAN NOT put the kitchen on the floating floor, the floating floor needs to be able to expand and contract with a min of 10 mm expansion or 1.5mm for every 1mt so a 10mt long room needs 15 mm expansion gap at ether end. Ask the kitchen supplier if he can leave the kick boards of a put them on are the floor is installed

No floor plan? But before even seeing that. What are the floors made of? Concrete or timber. What are the walls made of? Bricks or stud walls. If you have not purchased the home yet, is this a gathering of information for what it would cost to renovate? It is always better to live in a home and work out where the breezes come from, where the sun rises, where the best views are, before changing rooms around.

Look into terrazzo, it's basically polished concrete with style. Terrazzo is a poured coloured concrete with glass or stone chips in it to give it a variety of looks. It's then polished to a high lustre. It comes in any colour like from bright whites to black and you can choose the mix of aggregates to make your own custom flooring. Commonly seen in tiles, it can be poured as well to avoid the tiled look. A similar colouring to sandstone would be easy to achieve this way with a more durable finish. Terrazo's can also use interesting agregates like sea shells and limestone fossils to create a complete custom look. An alternative to a high thermal mass flooring would actually be the installation of phase change material mats in area's subject to direct light. Phase change material is a polymer used in the transport industry that either consumes or gives off heat as it moves from a solid to liquid state. The material is know to radiate either heat or cold back into the environment for many hours in a controlled release after several hours of charging through exposure to heat or cold. It's an inert technology that never wears out and innovative architects are beginning to incorporate it into passive housing design. The panels are manufactured to be quite thin so you could hang a pcm mat on a wall for example and easily cover it with something innocuous but it would passively heat the house.

Hello Agata, I think putting the kitchen into the dining area is the easiest option. Maybe pinch a bit off the media for panty and WIL. Then open the media room to the sitting/dining and make it a real part of the home. (Looks quite separated as it is... not useful!) One of the other plans looses any space for sitting area. This way there is still a large area for sitting and dining that has outlook through to the front of the home and out to the alfresco too so keeping all the social areas together. Also very good for the cross breezes for cooling the summer. Not sure where north is but the alfresco if it is to the north will block all the day sun from the living areas making the house dark too. Pergola and deciduous vine would be far better. Neat little part at the rear for the minor bedrooms. Laundry looks very small: another run of benching would be very handy and you would not be loosing anything from the lounge area to pinch some of it into laundry! Cheers Margot