thank you bigreader but I haven't posted a photo of them yet. They are not my ideal choice. I only went with these at the time because they were cheap from fantastic furniture. I originally wanted blue stools but the price was out of my budget considering I could get four grey/silver ones for the price of 1 blue one. I can post a photo of them in the morning

Amazingly nice people here! And thanks for all the sharing! I am working on a tiny walk-in pantry for my new build; it is actually a pantry in a scullery, as most Chinese people do, I will use the scullery as a second kitchen (imaging the smoke and greasy fume from woking!) so I am desperately in need of a pantry to store (and protect) stuff. Our designer actually scorns the idea of a walk-in pantry in a scullery; anyway I've got only 1.0m * 2.2m space to work on. I need a worktop to marinade food (with hundreds of spices near by) and knead doughs for bread, plenty of shelves of different depth, and some floor space for tall things like steam mop etc. The picture is what I now fancy about: when the sliding door opens, I will have wide clearance at the back to work on the benchtop (deeper part 600mm, shallower part 350mm), shallower benchtop is used for small appliances, and shelves of different depths on the left and bottom wall. My husband laughs and says he'd never seen such an irregular pantry. Does it work at all? Any suggestion? Please!

Just to confirm I have taken the great ideas presented here as advice only and have no intention to do some dodgy diy reno's. With the exception of a couple of quirky exposed timbers as you can see in my pictures there are no other exposed beams. As you can also see from the pictures there is a large roof space on the right (east) side of the house but the ceilings themselves are flat with a slight dip on the north wall. Based on my own personal experiences I would have to agree with Two's Company that there is a tendency towards rendered brick in WA (although there are still many exposed brick houses in my suburb) while double enclosed double garages are also highly desirable. I would also agree that toilets within the main bathroom and non traditional laundries may be considered unusual by many (but not all). Ensuites with toilets however are still very common. Also due to the nature of our work we would prefer the laundry separated from food/kitchen area. For a 4x2 house it is only around 155m2 excluding carport/alfresco which makes the rooms feel quite cramped, hence the desire to open up the family room. However, as Two's Company suggests we will need to first get a builder/eng in to check load bearing walls etc as this will undoubtedly affect what we can achieve within our budget. Having said that I still excited by many of your ideas and with luck hopefully can work some of them into the budget. Cheers all :)

Thanks siriuskey. I was worried that I would get something too off the rest of the style. I have an interior designer helping me but I have blown my budget already so used her advice for all the other furnishing and artwork. This website is amazing! For someone like me, who has no clue, is a life saver!!!