I think a nice grey (not too dark, but darker than your concrete driveway colour), on the weather boards OR the render around the entry (not both) would look great! It would modernise your home further; bring out the brick more; and tie in with your driveway and roof? Green foliage also looks great against grey so will complement nicely when you get your garden established. I can't reccomend any particular grey as I know nothing about paint colours, sorry!

When I was in Sydney and had a lot of leisure time, I joined dance classes to kill boredom. It was a wonderful experience, so now, whenever I feel down or alone at home, I start dancing.

And looking again, the rather narrow family room may be a bit hard to furnish, with doors on two sides and missing wall. It seems small compared to dining room and the internal playroom area. It’s the best spot in the house, north facing with views to your garden so you don’t want it to end up as a virtual corridor. Corners are the prime real estate. At the moment they are bedroom 1, bedroom 5, garage and alfresco. Three of those aren’t areas that need an outlook. I’d love to see your sitting area in a corner room with windows on two sides and views of your soon to be delightful garden! Perhaps alfresco where bed five is . Lounge where alfresco is, with double doors to close it off if needed, and maybe bed five where lounge is. I can’t see the plan as I write on my phone so I may be missing something major! Best of luck.

m_walker5, just from the 2 photos so far it seems to me the main first improvement to that space would be to remove the wall to the kitchen, so you need to find out if this is loadbearing or not. Stick your head up through the ceiling manhole to see how the structure is framed. If it is fully framed (rafters, ceiling joists, struts bearing down on internal walls) chances are that that wall is loadbearing. On the other hand if it is gangnail trusses (triangular frames with W braces held together with metal nail-plates) you are in luck. These typically span between outside walls and internal walls can usually be changed or removed easily. This is your staring point for deciding how far you want to go with this depending on budget, and is the point where you should involve an architect/designer to work out a comprehensive renovation plan. I have just completed a very similar project where the renovation was urgent (kitchen cabinets were falling off the walls!) but the budget was greatly reduced as the owner unexpectedly lost one source of income. We managed to do a full kitchen renovation, remove walls to create larger open-plan spaces, full re-sand and polish of floors, full internal repaint, all for about $80,000.