I've had quite a bit of fun today moving furniture around to try out everyone's wonderful ideas. I have decided that the dining room needs to stay where it is, as it doesn't quite work with the hall which adjoins. I have moved the china cabinet over to the smaller wall though, as someone suggested and added a house plant here and there - it looks right. Not sure yet if I will go for a large buffet or a reading nook, but a large rug for the dining area is definite, as is art on that large wall. Now to decide ... one large piece or a collection?

Got a minute? I offer a few words of advice. You have already run the roof drains into a drywell, bravo. Remove the stepping stone shortcut to the driveway. Move the trashcan to the service area, replace your light fixtures with LIGHT FIXTURES. Set up a small table with two or three chairs in the well of the red brick terrace, your outdoor room, for morning coffee with the neighbors as you work on your design and later work on its implementation. Analysis first, then design. Call "Miss Utility" or whatever you call the agency that will send someone out to mark your underground utilities. Have sidewalk chalk and surveyor's flags handy when they arrive, so you can attempt to prevent them from marking the routes with their spray paint, especially on the pavements. Take a copy of the official engineer's plat of your property, that you recieved when buying the property, and increase it to a usable size on graph paper as a base sheet for the information gathering to follow. On a vellum or tracing paper overlay, add all the improvements not shown on the plat beneath - the utility runs, above and below ground, the site improvements, building additions, edges of plant beds, walls, slopes, steps, trees, basketball posts, pool, tennis court, mark it all, so you can later indicate what to remove from the existing. Be sure to include a north arrow and, outside the property a morning sun and a setting sun, with a curving line indicating its daily path. Ask everyone in the family, and perhaps regular visiting friends to list all that they would personally like to see included in your site development plans - no ideas to be rejected from these wish lists, but only a limited few will be included in the first phase of development. Walk around the neighborhood, around your site, make a tour inside the house of all the window and doorway views, upstairs and down. Indicate on your coversheet those views you wish to block, screen or enhance. You are ready now to draw a schematic plan, upon which to attempt to marry all the existing site information with the initial phase of desired activities of the family and friends. a) On a sheet of vellum or tracing paper, bring through the existing engineer's data, the utility alignments. Make an indication, like the squiggle of a hair-roller where you want to block the view, maybe a note like bad view or block view. In similar fashion, a broad arrow pointing toward a desirable view you wish to maintain. Mark an area offsite that indicates a point from which your house is first seen by arriving guests. b) With a series of appropriate-sized circles, mark where you hope to include various activities. Outdoor family cooking and dining, perhaps a different area for entertaining guests outdoors. Mark where the different sports activities might be appropriate, many of which require only an open level lawn area (or sandy beach). If you have infants or infants of quests, indicate a spot you can monitor from kitchen and office windows. Does the husband want a horse-shoe court, a bocce court, a 3-hole putting green to compete with his guests? Since this is an older home, many of these spaces will be defined, but may not suit your family's needs. Indicate some to be changed in phase one, others to wait a few years while you tackle the front yard enhancements. Take this schematic plan to the copy center and have them make 3 or 4 copies for you. Store the original along with all the info gathered for its preparation in a safe place. The copies are to be kept handy for distribution and for your own use. Talk with the large local garden center to have a landscape designer come out to meet with you for a couple hours while you go over all the specific activities of phase one, which might include regrading, new walls, tree transplanting, pavements, water features, whatever. If you have prepared a list of plants and trees that you would be interested in sharing your home with, now or in the future, copy that for the designer as well. Do not prejudge by comments like formal or informal. You are your own site planner. You now need the help of a plantsman and contractor. It will probably only cost $100 or so for the initial planning, as they will be receiving 10-15% commission on what ever you spend at their garden center. Have another coffee in your outdoor room. Good luck!

Agree with all above. First think what you need the extra space for - you have lots of options. Also remember it is a walk through, so a 'public' space. If used as a study would be best if not too messy or private.

Hi Stan, thanks for your comments. Yeah I always put the outcome on my posts, I think is the least I can do as a thank you. The advice everyone gives is priceless. In another one of my posts I was prevented from making a big and costly mistake with my outdoor kitchen thanks to people’s suggestions so I am really thankful everyone’s input. I would have executed some other ideas here but given my budget and time constraints (we have a big get together next week and wanted to have it done prior) I decided to go with the easiest one for now. This will buy me some time to look for the perfect look (for me) whilst still having somebody of wall decoration in place. Re the corridor , is on the plan to add a skylight in the future. You know the worst part? This is a newly built home and I had asked for the skylight to be in the corridor but they misplaced and put it right in front of a big window, where no light is needed at all - and we didn’t pick up the mistake in the plants :(. Anyway, we will fiz it later when budget allows :). Would love to see the after picture on your corridor - only the before one was posted. Cheers