Hi Flexico, We love the first option - bright colours! We also suggest accommodating your garage with a few green touches as it would help to bring brightness and character to the garage. For example, you could add light green storage boxes or maybe a simple green coloured painting? Best of luck with your project

The last home we had was a very small workers cottage so I kept the walls a light off white, table and to unit tops were gloss white to bounce the light around. My dining chairs and bar stools were clear acrylic so that I could see through them, the ends of my island bench/brekky bar were mirrored and my curtains were textured white sheers so that they also didn't take up too much visual room. All of my furniture was on legs so that I could see under it and the lounge room rug was pulled away from the lounge just a teeny bit so that I could see a little bit of timber flooring all the way round it, that all made the floor size look just a bit bigger. Bedrooms had mirrored wardrobe doors and bathroom was almost completely white (except for dark floor) and had frameless shower screen and oversized vanity mirror to reflect as much light as possible. Friends and visitors would comment that the house was bigger than they had imagined from the outside.......it wasn't, it was just styled inside to make it look larger.

I happen to love shaker style, but it kind of depends on the mood/style you're going for in the rest of the house. Your floating shelves are already a bit modern/transitional, and most of what you see from the back of the island is glass upper cabinets so I think you could easily go the modern/transitional direction with the clean doors. If you're more into traditional, and are planning on going that direction with light fixtures and furniture, etc., continue with the shaker.

You said you loved the concept design but then the estimates came in too high. Find some more money so you can do it or do what the architect has suggested by going single storey. We all see some quite bland designs, standard fit out, cookie cutter as you noted; this is all due to budget being too low for the brief. Plenty of Projects all get watered down so they're affordable. Plenty of additions to dwellings can just be expensive to achieve. Do some quick calculations yourself - minimum $2500+ per square metre of new added space for bog standard fit out. Add in the bathroom at $20k, kitchen at $20k, laundry $8k, staircase at $15k, fire rated walls between existing and new, upgrading existing dwelling...... plenty of architect designed residential homes are pushing $5k per square metre. This is not really 100% accurate just ballpark figures to get started on so we don't end with a project we can't afford. It just adds up real quick. The designer should have known budget up front and worked to that or at least been within 10% at this early stage. Build costs between builders shouldn't be that far apart unless one is missing something so I wouldn't bother builder shopping with plans missing vital construction details just yet. If you're unhappy with current architect, move on to another. Why not consider a building designer or a local draftsman perhaps.