Great transformation!

Hi Anne, there are some good suggestions above, in addition the question I always ask is "where is north"!! This should be a consideration too, and it's a little hard to tell how this open plan room connects to the rest of the house - is it the door at the end of the lounge, and are those solid walls at that end? (You might want to consider taking the windows further into the corner of the lounge, to ensure you can see the view from your couch/lounge chairs etc). I am quite curious about what "view" it is! Ocean? Mountain? Although a kitchen-sink window is always great, because you tend to spend more time socialising and meal-prepping around the large island, we would suggest trying to have the island face the view, or if side-on to the view, that it isn't obstructed by other benches. With your room only 6.5m wide, if you rotated through 90degrees and placed the kitchen on the long wall and leaving the pantry/wet room 'behind' the kitchen as in the current arrangement this might potentially block the flow of circulation through to the rest of the house. You could consider leaving the kitchen as-is but moving the kitchen sink bench to the other side and making this a 'tall things' zone (fridges etc) and moving the sink to where the fridge was, and moving pantry entry to the same side as wet-entry. The reason I suggest this is because when you are cooking intensely, you want to minimise circulation routes through a kitchen, so people can come and go and access the fridge (and the wine!) without interrupting the cooking. Of course it is only access to the pantry, so this might be fine too however if you did move the pantry entry to the other end this would create a protected cooking zone at the 'view' end. Ultimately, there is the opportunity to fully glaze the view whether the island is side-on or facing the view - exactly like the kitchen image posted above! (But insert your view into the picture!) As a side note, some builders only complain about sliding doors because they are harder to install and problematic to fix if the architraves need to be removed and replastering done (compared with simply rehanging a swing door!) For a good builder it should simply not be an issue and will significantly improve your access to the space, we always do sliding doors into pantries! Also ditto about the width of the pantry, 1.8m would allow a 600mm bench space on one side for appliances to be kept out, normal depth drawers under and shelves over, and a wall of 300mm wide shelves the other side, this will genuinely feel like a 'big' pantry. And finally - a suggestion to NOT put an oven in the pantry if 4doz bottles of wine are in there! Even if you are not cellaring long term wine likes a nice stable (and cool) temperature for storage. Good Luck Anne!

Such a great article PJ Burns! Love all these thoughtful ideas.. I love the sunroom in the photo you featured, it would be such a beautiful space to have a built in window chair with throw cushions.

Hello Erika, thank you for posting this link, but more importantly one should read the reference material it relies on; namely https://www1.health.gov.au/internet/main/publishing.nsf/Content/562CF83B7AECFC8FCA2584420002B113/$File/NDDT-Final-Report-June-2021.pdf where this tabloid with its sensationalizing headline and selectively quoting from a single study and saying "there is increasingevidence dust control measures do not reduce the levels of silica to non-hazardous levels." all makes for a good story, however this so called "evidence" is of one small study that measured exposure and made its conclusions from dry cutting practices, which is a practice that is in contravention of existing Work Health Safety regulations. So going back to the lead reference material of your link; the National Dust Disease Task Force Report, they identify the major problem is Non-Compliance of those said safety guidelines that I discussed in my earlier post, where this non-compliance is happening by some remaining Stonemasons who now knowingly don't comply with those safety guidelines. I suspect I am not going to change your mind on this issue but I think it is wrong to demonize the product when the problem today is human behaviour of those wanting to save on their bottom line and knowingly fail to comply with set safety regulations. Your condemnation of this product is like saying all Cars should be banned because there are some people who drive recklessly. This report from the National Dust Disease Task Force is worth reading along with its recommendations to combat this non compliance. Malcolm