Sorry to be a downer, Suzanne, but the minute I saw your table I immediately thought bulk so I have to agree with Leelee, that it will visually fill an area, especially where space is tight. That said, I do love the table. The other thing I am looking at is the table with your sofa - the sofa is much more formal and delicate and suggests a period design, while the table is ultra modern, heavy and casual. I'm wondering what chairs you would put with the table to balance these differences out and that won't be swamped by the table. Love the example Dy has posted for you, he always has great ideas. There was a lady once on Houzz who had an extremely tiny home we helped her decorate and she went with predominant whites with shades of blue and natural elements and the result was restful and really beautiful. Her tiny rooms were beautifully decorated without making the rooms looked swamped. These make great backdrop colours and you can see from the two vases of flowers just how easy it is to add some additional colour. Keep a lot of clear glass for accessories too - lamp bases, coffee or side tables, vases, etc. These will create a more spacious look also while still dressing a room.

Hello Dee, I would 'mirror image' your plan and have the kitchen against the original part of the house (to the left of your step down) and still with the island. You could then have sliding doors facing both decks, and hopefully a beautiful outlook to your garden, also a lovely vista when you walk down the steps... your living dining furniture will have the feel of more room against windows, rather than boxed in by walls.

Depending on your budget and how much structural work you want to have done, you could keep most of it the same. But you would loose your meals room. extend your laundry to the door of the meals room, turn your laundry side ways this will give you access to the out side, on the other side of the laundry extend your wall pass the internal door of the meals room to create a walk in pantry, extend kitchen gallery to laundry and pantry, open up internal walls of kitchen to living room and dinning room creating a beautiful Island bench looking into living room. open up external dining room wall for sliding doors to bring the inside out. because there is a walk in pantry there would be no need for upper counters so u could also have a bar at the kitchen window on the outside. Doing it this way you would save a lot of money not having to move plumbing and electrical in the kitchen. You would have to walk through your kitchen to get to laundry though.

it's a very strange plan for a new build but of course we're used to looking at Australian plans...who will use the downstairs bathroom and three living areas and how many will live in the house and do you expect to have long stay guests? is there an upstairs bathroom you'll be sorry if there isn't.....do you have no neighbours and great views in every direction?..what is the distance from the outside walls to the boundaries....i suggest that you need to spend more time thinking about how you'll live in the house before choosing windows..if you enlarge the plan and make some cut out scale sized furniture you can trial different ways that furniture and kitchen cabinets can be placed in the rooms and make sure that you allow at least 1m pathways around the furniture..even if you have to pay for local authorities to reconsider the plans it's very important to make sure that you have the best possible arrangements..it costs no different to build a better plan and you'll enjoy the benefits for the lifetime of the house...can you repost the plans with dimensions clearly shown and also add a copy of the upstairs and you should receive lots of great ideas and i'll also redraw some ideas to consider