Hardwood looks great and as they say, you can repolish it every five years. Personally I really love the hardwood tiles at Tile Boutique. They are truly amazing. Can't pick them from the real hardwood. Definitely worth a look. I'm tiling my house with them because I have to put up with kids and dog and don't want to worry about my floors. Don't show up the dirt and low maintenance.

I've been playing around with a pantry location. Originally, I was going to move the pantry into the laundry with some custom shelving and cut the laundry space in half. Now, Im thinking of cutting into the study area and building a wall there, and converting the new space into a long and narrow walk in pantry. Either that or build half a wall and put built in shelving in the study. Building the extra wall will reduce the need to cover in the door way that is currently in place and instead utilising it. Thoughts? p.s. this isnt too scale.

For storage, I used a mirrored lift up cupboard door above the sink area in my very small ensuite with some success. We put power points inside the cupboard too - it was a very good place to have them as the door lifts up & is out of the way. I also used some of the wall space to allow slightly deeper shelves, without the cupboard jutting so far into the room. The cistern was recessed into the wall cavity, (in our case below the window) & it worked well to save a little space in the room. Photos are not very good, but I hope you can get the idea.. It worked very well. The ensuite was 1mx2m. We use vertical towel rails. They're really good & very compact, but do make sure the electrician installs them up the right way. They work on the heat rising principal & do not work well upside down as ours were installed!Hope this is helpful. Good luck.

Exxy to move the stairs (but brilliant idea!) - so how about take out dining/hall wall and put just one long line of low kitchen cupboards down where that wall was or closer to the opposite side - so you open up all space and see all from walking in the front door. Make either a horse shoe kitchen config with cooker at top end. Then paint all cupboards in same colour - say a gum tree green - and give them new handles. In area between cupboards newly tile or lay a lino floor as easy and inexpensive to do and there are some really pretty decent patterns these days. If you've any money left over or later, boost the lighting with a strip of spots that point to the island worktop, the window worktop AND the cooker. But where is the fridge to go??