Hi all,

Our driveway is pretty much dead space at the moment. We are investigating other renovation options at the moment (new kitchen, opening up some walls, some landscaping, a new garage, etc), and figure we should consider what to do with the driveway space.

We dont use the driveway other than for throwing the ball for our doc (pictured). It is a really tight space, and I personally dont like driving down there for fear of scratching my car!

The garage we are looking at will be at the back of the property, on the other side, as we have a rear laneway. So no need for the driveway to get to the garage. Additionally, at the front, we only need enough space to fit a car for front off street parking, and that is covered easily enough.

The horrible fence in the picture here has been replaced about 6 months ago with a nice dark-green and tall, colour bond fence. Sorry for the old photo.

Id like to take down the archway at the front of the property and the iron gates too.

North is to the left of the photo, so those windows on the right can get some good northern light.

So my random thinking is,

1) Remove the arches and gate. Replace it with a similar colour bond wall/fence to my fence. Have a doorway in it. Thereby blocking the view from the street and giving a bit more privacy, and also people cant see my dog (this is super important to me actually).

2) Deck the area, put up a nice little outdoor furniture set. Technically though the back door of the house would be - if you can imagine - to the front right of the photo... where that brown beam is, and over a couple meters. So the deck area wouldnt really flow out from the house.

3) If I did deck it, maybe a normal sized door coming off the brick wall. Where that second window is, is the lounge room.

4) Extend the house out to the side. Inside is a pretty cramped space. the living space and kitchen space is only ~5m wide, so adding another couple of meters would be huge. That said, seems like a very very expensive option.

5) Dig up the path and lay grass/plants, though we will have a solid patch of grass directly behind where this photo is taken.

Other) Leave it as a driveway. "free" option, but pretty dead space.

Open to any thoughts or suggestions on how to best use this dead space :D

Thanks!!!

The new fence.

A couple of front views for perspective. We can park a car here, as well as in the garage when we put that up out the back on the other side.