Michelle, I'm not a builder but am building with hubby, a single storey limestone home. Our daughter built a two storey limestone home just down the road, that hubby also built for her and the extra foundations she had to install would be at least twice more than we have for our single storey, not to mention that there were allot of short walled founds leading off the perimeter of her home to assist in less likelihood of wall roll out and the inspector called it. Cost for you, will depend on whether you have adequate foundations to carry a second storey and usually that is never the case. All the lower walls will need double the support and it usually has to carry on down to the foundations, depending on whether you have a solid concrete slab or concrete stumps that are accessible. This would mean most of the plaster being removed and hoping that you find no nasty surprises as far as the condition of the existing frame in the home, the builder would as I mentioned, have to add structural supports to carry the second storey. Most often, second stories are built with a hardiplank type exterior and certainly not brickwork as you would then difinitely have to have extra foundations in for such a reno and you would have to start asking yourself if it isn't better to demolish as this type of reno can be extremely costly. You might be lucky but probably highly unlikely, to have adequate structional integrity to be able to add a second storey, without everything I have mentioned to be skipped in any way. I hazzard a guess that such a reno would cost you $250,000+ and maybe more. Would love to know what you finally decide to do and your builders estimate. Good luck. Cheers, Barbara

I didn't notice the leather @Neryl Hollingsworth! It's a chair-table hybrid it seems. My friend took this at a gallery some where, and we've been trying to track the piece down ever since!

Hi Kathy, so thrilled to hear my comments got you started thinking of the big picture, it has been a pleasure working with this. When you are starting totally from scratch like this it is easy to become too close to the issues and the brain becomes overloaded so you can't see the woods for the trees. I think this is also a classic example of why I always tell people to live in a house for a year before beginning to decorate, as hard as it is to be patient and wait, you do need to get the feel for a house and relate your lifestyle to it. I do like your idea of splitting the room into two areas, the room looks big enough to give you this option, and to me intimate spaces within a room create a more welcoming and homely feel. When you have a good idea of the furniture you would like, put what you have in the room and measure anything else before you buy it, use newspaper or cardboard boxes the size of the pieces and put them around the room to ensure you are going to get the desired result. It can be so easy to over or under estimate just how much space furniture will take up. Sorry the green lounge in the study didn't work out, but glad this has helped you see options. Just my personal opinion, one of my joeys had a lovely old grandfather clock in her lounge room and while it was a beautiful piece of furniture to look at, I just found it a little on the intrusive side - with its constant chiming it just didn't make the room feel relaxing, one was just so aware of the passing of time. Of course this can be advantageous when certain rellies visit. She ended up moving hers to her entrance foyer where it was a stand out feature and the lounge room became so much more relaxing. Love to see some photos of your landscaping.

Hi, carpet has a consumer rating system that guides on the durability of each piece of carpet. It is designed to show you how a carpet wears. There are four ratings, light duty, medium duty, heavy duty and extra heavy duty, plus stairs. Each of these indicate the suitability of a carpet for a specific area. Stairs and passages are the hardest on carpet as the wear is concentrated. visually, how the higher rating is achieved is easily seen as there is more yarn per square yard to enable sharing of the wear. It is often expressed as a weight measurement per oz. eg 38oz. This is not usually provided by the manufacturers as they often vary it except in high weight or commercial carpets. what none of the above tells you however is how the carpet performs for flattening or staining. nylon has a good durability and flattening resistance, but average stain resistance so needs a treatment. This is because the structure of the fibre allows further colour ingress (stains) unless it is protected. polyester has a very good stain resistance particularly when it is solution dyed however it is extremely prone to flattening, particularly in doorways and track areas. If you are going to select a solution dyed polyester, my tip would be to get the tightest and thickest version you can, and make up some of the offcuts into mats for the doorways by getting them edged at a rug overlocker. my choice would be the solution dyed nylon in at least a heavy duty grade with the best underlay you can get (helps the durability and feels softer) cheers