Restore the facade. Don't render as you'll loose the fabulous brickwork. Just re-point it. Do maintenance on the roof as needed. I'd pressure clean then see what it comes up like. If it's still a bit ordinary then paint it. I would do a bit of investigating on other original colour schemes before choosing charcoal, even though I admit the charcoal does look really good! By the way we render as we don't want to pay brickies to really use their craft so we buy cheap bricks and render. Render does look fine when used as a feature rather than a whole facade. Don't compete with neighbours make your house more desirable by keeping its character. I would however consider spending some good money on the landscaping. There are some superb gardens on these wonderful homes around the inner suburbs of Melbourne for example and would work great with yours.

Unless you have the money to update everything else to better complement the bricks, painting them will give you a much more updated look. Over the past 18mths I’ve been working on the front and landscape of my current house, including painting the bricks and it has made the world of difference! I’ve attached a before and after photo! Good luck.

It all depends on how much money you would like to spend. As your lounge is dark and your stools and bookcase are also dark I think white chairs would be fine, but then I would change the stools as well and take some white down to the lounge area. However you can buy stretchy covers for this style of chair for around $10 and there is quite a variety, so I would look on line for those to see if you like any of them as that would be a very easy fix.

My walk in was well over a metre deep and width was a couple of metres to the wall. The glass screen was a metre and a bit so there was no splashing into the room. The shower came off the end wall same as the pic however it was one of those variable height showers on a rod, I have no doubt the shower in the pic will be splashing into the room which would drive me nuts. Mine looked great, so open, neat, big, except the floor hadn't been layed properly so instead of the water going toward the drain under the shower head it went all over the bathroom, nearly 3 metres out right down to the loo creating a massive puddle in front of the vanity as well. Getting it sorted with the builder was nightmare I eventually gave up and ended up having a low barrier installed from glass to wall. It still looked fine and stopped the problem but one really has to ensure the floor angle is done properly before embarking on the walk-in shower exercise.