Thank you so much. I am standing in my kitchen looking at my shelves and you are so right. Why are all my items so short?? Rookie mistake. I will some height and depth. The rug is bring updated. I'm thinking something with creams or even tan and yes bigger is way better. I think I'll swap the chairs and couch as suggested. I like the light that comes in from that window when the chairs are there but I do think the space looks better with the chairs across from the fireplace . And we are looking for bigger, more comfy (but still modern) chairs diff colour. Thank you again!!

Gioenne, I go to sleep on my left, semi-foetal, hands either under my cheek or under my pillow. Soon after we married, hubby was curled up to my back with one arm underneath my pillow. Half-asleep, I stretched my hands up under the pillow and touched his hand. I thought there was a dismembered hand under my pillow and screamed! Next year will be our 30th anniversary - I don't scream at him anymore.

Reading this thread, the picture I got (maybe from another discussion because I'm sure I've seen this talked about before?) was a dividing line somewhere between a few extra pillows which enhance the bed aesthetically, are potentially useful for sitting up to read a book, and are easily stored elsewhere when not required and too many extra pillows which make the bed look less like a bed and more like a pillow factory, are potentially useful for an attempt at a world record pillow fight, and keep you up all night moving them when you need access to the bed.

Interesting house. You appear to have good western shade with trees in the front garden - do you plan to keep that? And your kitchen should get decent light/warmth in winter, because it faces north. Can you capitalise on that with bigger windows on that side, without compromising privacy for you and your neighbour? The back area won't get much sun in winter but will be a lovely retreat from the afternoon heat in summer. Can you open up access to the lounge room and kitchen to enjoy that more? Ditching the separate laundry and building it into the kitchen area would improve outlook and year round air flow. It would also give you more room in the kitchen/dining area to include a study nook. I realise you might have difficulty with a high number of windows and doors in the lounge, but that high window on the back wall of the lounge room seems to rob you of a lot of good things and offer very little. Removing the wall between the lounge and kitchen and putting in a U shaped kitchen would offer an interesting, open space. Harder to heat in winter (because you can't close off separate rooms) but more able to take advantage of the cooler air from the rear in summer and the northern sun and heat in winter. The study seems the obvious space for a main bedroom with a small ensuite and WIR, but it's not great to have it coming off the dining room. Without an addition I don't know what else you could do. I suggest you reduce your front entries to one very inviting one - at present you have one into the kitchen and one into the lounge. Unless you want to do something like put in bifolds or stacking doors to allow you to open up the house to the courtyard, I'd stick with one lovely (timber or a bright colour) door into the lounge and replace other doors with big windows (or glass doors that obviously aren't your front door). If you open up the kitchen and lounge by removing that joining wall, it will particularly need you to have one entry focus. Also allows you to have a lovely pathway through the courtyard to the door. Given the age of the house it is unlikely to have decent insulation - and hard to install in a flat roofed house. Might be worth replacing ceilings and inserting insulation as you do. Windows will almost certainly be only 3mm glass - consider putting in thicker glass in new windows as this can really improve temperature control (or very good floor to ceiling curtains). Good luck with this. Great project.