We also bought an 80's (decade that style forgot!) 2nd house & have been renovating over the last couple of years. Lots of red feature brick, dark wood, slate floors (ugh), dark. In most of the brick areas we rendered then painted Dulux Lexicon 1/2, where there was brick adjoining built in wardrobes we painted the brick. Also beadboarded over red brick walls dividing the main spaces. Painted all of the dark woodwork - beams, skirts, archs & doors Dulux White on White. The slate however was a major undertaking to remove. Did this in the dining & kitchen areas as there is clear delineation between these spaces & the main living area. Jackhammer, lots of noise & dust. Slate remains in the main living area as it's too big an expanse to contemplate going through the removal process & mess again. Have used light coloured rugs on those floors. Believe you can get slate ground down to flatten out bumps then cover it with tile or a floating floor. However if there's any drumminess in the slate it won't provide a reliable subfloor for another covering. In the laundry & bathroom we tiled over the slate, as these were smaller areas. Looks fine & you would never know it was there. Lighting is critical, but you'll find as soon as you eliminate some of the dark brick colour light will reflect rather than being sucked into the space. Here are some before & after images showing comparison, out of the dark & into the light...

I would definitely keep your taps and sink, but replace/go over the top of the bench top! It would be nice to price replacing that shower door - change to a frameless or semi frameless piece of glass. Change out all towel rails and such wall fixtures - you can get good chrome looking budget ones at Bunnings that will last three years. Personally, I would definitely paint the vanity doors white gloss - a 2-pak look. You might find the only available options for going over your current floor (other than tiles), are pretty ugly and I wouldn't trust tile paint on the floor it has been known to wear badly. If you don't mind a very small step up into the bathroom, you can tile straight over the top of those tiles, Go to a tile outlet place and you will get very nice tiles in the small quantity you need for less than $100, and the tiling job shouldn't take long or cost much. I have done exactly that myself and I would look into that if you really hate the floor tiles. If the wall tiles are cream and not white, I would paint them with white tile paint. If you do change the floor at all, I would get tile paint in a similar tone - say a stone or grey colour or something similar to the floor colour you go with and use that tile paint to paint carefully over the dark brown stripes in those wall tiles - or better still - try white tile paint over them first and see how they look. I would definitely be painting all that mission brown trim and the inside of the door white if it were me as it will modernise and freshen the space right up, but if you really want to stick to a timber stain, then yes, I would go much lighter than it currently is. Definitely paint the vanity doors in my opinion though if you want to update the whole look in there. Would be best to get rid of that piece of timber between the shower and the door too! That's just me though! Best of luck with it!

You were fortunate Donnae68, did you get it tested? I believe that you can get a sample tested for about $100 or so. Here is an excerpt on it's history: In Australia, asbestos cement materials were first manufactured in the 1920s and were commonly used in the manufacture of residential building materials from the mid-1940s until the late 1980s. During the 1980s asbestos cement materials were phased out in favour of asbestos-free products. From 31 December 2003, the total ban on manufacture, use, reuse, import, transport, storage or sale of all forms of asbestos came into force. Many houses built before 1990 therefore contain asbestos cement materials, especially in the eaves, internal and external wall cladding, ceilings (particularly in wet areas such as bathrooms and laundries) and fences.

Kill two birds with one stone and replace the balustrade with a full length, double sided cabinet. This will blur the height difference between the rooms while creating more if a sense of the two rooms working independently of each other, and provide a place for interesting piece or two on the top(like sculpture). In the process, you could ensure the traffic flow and furniture of the rooms works best with the passage to the lounge where it is, and if not, decide where it works best and build the cabinet either side of the passage.