Agree wiuth Barbara and anyone thinking iof putting a paint-loaded brush or roller anywhere near a vintage timber piece of furniture..."it would be a... SIN! Seems the compulsion of the mass renovcators is to paint everything....and its the easiest solution. Don't think happy renovators and DIY-ers have changed much over the years either. I have just finished stripping five coats of enamel from the most beautiful set of silky oak french doors with etched frosted glass...how many SINS there!!! Silky oak is an open grain timber so the last coats had to be done by the funny little man out in his bush shack restoration shed...and Oh what a beautiful job! I am over the moon and do not care what it cost...although it was not a lot compared to what I'd have paid in Sydney. Here a tip for any appreciators...(.if there are any left) of fine timbers. All you need is an old enamel bath tub and gallons of metholated spirits....just give it a bath and save yourself hours of scraping and fumes and burns. SORRY about the deviatiuon but this is my latest Soap Box...don't paint vintage timber! About your problem Wendi, I think, with Barbara, wait until you have your whole dining set and then stain the piece to fit in with the timber in that...( unless you are going to get a white one...( tongue in cheek). I've seen some really nice dining sets with the best of both ...legs and table frame in a (cringe) painted colour and table top in timber...saw a really desirable inlaid table top at my favourite little man's shed last week..the rest was painted and had a drawer for each place....with old metal handles. Legs were on castors.. The chair seats were upholstered...but needed recovering and the frames were metal...could have been an alloy of sorts. The combination of unpainted- stained timber..especially in inlay, with the painted parts, the metal frames and upholstered chairs just fitted together perfectly...so best of both. You migh be lucky enough to find the perfect table with a natural timber top...( and I wish you to find one with an inlaid design featurting timbers of different hues....) then your lovely little cabinet/sideboard might fit perfectly! There are some lovely timber stains around today...timber can be stained any colour...as long as its a transparent dye. A wonderful product is FEZLAC...that's the base and it is a shellac. To this you add the stain -colour you want. I've used it to put designs (fake inlay) on the backs of some really lovely old chairs...imitating the different natural timber hues in real inlay....So above are a few words, tales and suggestions that I hope will inspire you NOT to paint that cabinet.

Tell me about it, the ones across the road were going all day and night in the front yard, including revving up a motor bike they're not allowed to ride! my hubby wears flannie shirts when he's not in work gear. He likes ripping them, that's a trend that should end. of course, all Australian flag thongs (flip flops) are made in China!

In my early twenties I designed kitchens for my mother and two aunts (Uncle built them and they worked), but when it came to designing my own - had to fit a constrained space and no possibility of extension - I chewed my lips for ages - like Nicole, I drew and measured ad infinitum, and used graph book walls, views etc. I did one extra thing - which I think worked - I listed all that I wanted to store, and tried to analyse how I liked working in the kitchen. Some things I had to settle for because of space (such as a smaller dishwasher) but most of it has worked. We have a corner pantry, which I (and the cat, husband a bit larger) can walk into, but have not put small appliances in there - they sit in a large drawer beneath the main working bench, which also works well. It all looks good to me Nicole and thinking carefully about needs and how things work in advance usually results in something you'll be happy with. Good luck!

Hi Anne, there are some good suggestions above, in addition the question I always ask is "where is north"!! This should be a consideration too, and it's a little hard to tell how this open plan room connects to the rest of the house - is it the door at the end of the lounge, and are those solid walls at that end? (You might want to consider taking the windows further into the corner of the lounge, to ensure you can see the view from your couch/lounge chairs etc). I am quite curious about what "view" it is! Ocean? Mountain? Although a kitchen-sink window is always great, because you tend to spend more time socialising and meal-prepping around the large island, we would suggest trying to have the island face the view, or if side-on to the view, that it isn't obstructed by other benches. With your room only 6.5m wide, if you rotated through 90degrees and placed the kitchen on the long wall and leaving the pantry/wet room 'behind' the kitchen as in the current arrangement this might potentially block the flow of circulation through to the rest of the house. You could consider leaving the kitchen as-is but moving the kitchen sink bench to the other side and making this a 'tall things' zone (fridges etc) and moving the sink to where the fridge was, and moving pantry entry to the same side as wet-entry. The reason I suggest this is because when you are cooking intensely, you want to minimise circulation routes through a kitchen, so people can come and go and access the fridge (and the wine!) without interrupting the cooking. Of course it is only access to the pantry, so this might be fine too however if you did move the pantry entry to the other end this would create a protected cooking zone at the 'view' end. Ultimately, there is the opportunity to fully glaze the view whether the island is side-on or facing the view - exactly like the kitchen image posted above! (But insert your view into the picture!) As a side note, some builders only complain about sliding doors because they are harder to install and problematic to fix if the architraves need to be removed and replastering done (compared with simply rehanging a swing door!) For a good builder it should simply not be an issue and will significantly improve your access to the space, we always do sliding doors into pantries! Also ditto about the width of the pantry, 1.8m would allow a 600mm bench space on one side for appliances to be kept out, normal depth drawers under and shelves over, and a wall of 300mm wide shelves the other side, this will genuinely feel like a 'big' pantry. And finally - a suggestion to NOT put an oven in the pantry if 4doz bottles of wine are in there! Even if you are not cellaring long term wine likes a nice stable (and cool) temperature for storage. Good Luck Anne!