Thanks Jayme, I get what you mean, it's just not really practical for our house & will make the renovation a lot more difficult & expensive if we start moving walls like the to gain an extra couple of feet. It's possibly a load bearing wall too. But that area which is currently our kitchen where we are thinking of putting the fire place isn't the main living area, it's basically the centre of our living area which is a long room from one end of the house to the other, so we were thinking having the fire there will warm the house better being that it will have the kitchen & dining table one side of it & the lounge the other side. I think we could it a couple of cozy arm chairs & a small coffee table or we could just put a love seat up against the section of wall opposite the fire?

Hi Seren, You appear to have a very good grasp on the way forward for your new house, very exciting. As per normal the agents plans leave a lot to be guessed and with limited other info, like who's going to be living there, are you working from home, Aspect etc etc. You will and have already received a lot of interesting helpful ideas for your consideration, this will be helpful when you proceed with your chosen local Pro after having lived in the house for 6-12 mths to get a better understanding of the flow and use etc I would also like you to add to this. Butlers Pantries are a Fad and were originally built in house holds that had a Butler or employed some one to clean/cleanup for them. This space is much better to be included in the actual carefully planned kitchen, Laundry, I don't agree with it being combined with the current kitchen in that very small space, where do you put dirty laundry and baskets full of either clean or dirty, there's not enough floor space, so will make a very small kitchen even smaller Ensuite and WIR I don't think that they are a must, another fad, when your 3 bedroom 1 bath home was built they did the right thing with making the toilet separate to the bathroom to allow for better function. I love spaces that can be multi functional and I'am not talking about Media rooms. Bedrooms can be so much more and yours appear to be of good size but we won't know until correct measurements are taken. Bedrooms are great spaces to get away to with a comfortable chair or two to read and yep watch TV, these days they take up so little space and as I'am not the football loving kind it works for me. Home office Study, Don't put in your bedroom, horrible, that's why in my plan even though the space is small, I have suggested a separate Landry, a Pantry/Study/computer looking out into the rear garden. A pantry only needs a wall of narrow shelves to store appliances and food stuff in Containers, I don't want to stand in a Pantry doing dishes!. That's why we have open plan kitchen family rooms to spend time together, formal dining rooms aren't necessary. Yes, to remove walls is a bit more complicated than not having to, I have experience with this having helped remove a large brick wall in our Federation house to allow for a combined kitchen and family room which was the best thing we did. Hubby and a builder neighbour fitted the two steel RXJ's, I was on brick removal duty with a wheel barrow. ( We had a family engineer approve this work). There wasn't enough space to build out and have a pool, so we chose to go with a pool instead. Your house as far as can be seen appears to have a reasonable amount of land, so a connected Pavillion might be the best solution going forward to give you more space. Can't just allow the Pro's to make long Posts Take your time and keep us posted cheers

Thanks siruskey, I love this idea, I might use it for the future to creat a small ensuite for bed 1. I always thought about an ensuite but never knew how we could do it and with this you wouldn’t loose much at all from bed 2. I’ve been looking at the ideas from everyone and the space and I think changing the orientation to face the court yard with glass doors out that way and laundry/ toilet then along the back wall might be an idea. Like oklouise said a toilet off the kitchen isn’t great but without major construction elsewhere in the house it’s not possible and budget wise not an option now. My only issue with glass doors facing the court yard is we won’t get as much light in.

Thank you Geluka and Margot, the breakfast bar won't be 2 level, the app we used to draw up this design doesn't allow a single piece of bench (to wrap around the support column) hence the split level look. We will have a glass door for our mud room/laundry entrance. Probably won't have a pergola as the courtyard will be quite small and narrow post extension. I am considering moving the oven tower to the end of the bench housing the stove top. Assuming a 900mm stove, 600mm oven tower that will leave 600mm clearance on either side of the stove top. Many thanks, Ee ;)