The latest colour combination, and an inspirational picture. The first colour is Dulux Cave Man, Camel Train, Fair Bianca

Thanks Anne and I will look at pale grey given the maintenance considerations. I have already paid for a colour consultant who was great but the Reckless grey she suggested for the house render and basalt gutters/fascia and front wall were too grey when we had the render samples put on and while it had a modern look, it was not giving the beach/coastal feel. I will head back into our inspirations paint store this morning to see if I can find the warm grey colours that have the most similar colour make up to Dune, and go from there. Anne you don't happen to know the dulux colour most close in composition to Colorbond Dune so I know where to start? Thanks again and I would love to hear from anyone who has got a dune roof and hear if they tried light coloured gutters and what render colours they have used on their walls.

Oh boy oklouise, this is dangerous territory when you ask about the perfect reno! We thought we did have the perfect Reno we could afford in stages but we got just about ready to lodge with council and our architect surprised us with the costings going over by $200K and giving us a lovely flat roof and new cladding for our first stage budget. We now have about $10K less after this process and are really feeling vulnerable I suppose. So we are back to square one but the essentials are: repair the deck on the steep slope at the back, remove internal walls to open the space downstairs, reposition the staircase, new flooring, new kitchen and provide an aesthetically pleasing but functional entrance. Wish list would be garage/carport & driveway, flat roof, new bathroom upstairs, new laundry & WC downstairs and landscaping. $100K for the first stage (which probably means just deck repairs and removing walls?!) then we would be looking at refinancing and seeing what we can do next. The architect designs were beautiful but unattainable unfortunately. Anyway, I advertised our job about a week ago and I think someone is interested in meeting with us and I've also left a message for Dr Retro so I don't want you all to spend too much time on this although I really really appreciate and welcome your advice. Thank you again oklouise, Lisa

@Dee painted fly screen door up now. Still haven't painted concrete stairs and verandah.