I once picked what I thought was a soft orange red for our bed room. It turned out to be Home Depot orange. As my husband refuses to paint a room more often than every 5 years, we lived with that orange. At least I was mostly there with the lights out, and it did make our north facing bedroom more cheerful. But for some reason we found ourselves at Home Depot much more often then!

Thank you for your comments - I did a bit of a mock up with various colours and am erring towards a darker colour as it would blend in more. When I zoomed in on the photo I noticed the house down the front of the view has a monument colour roof so that gave me a bit of insight into how a dark colour would sit amongst the trees - if I wanted to tint it a bit more towards the water colour (although this changes on a daily basis!) I could use ironstone which is like monument with a touch of blue. The heat adsorption by the darker colour doesn't worry me as much as our roofer says it doesn't make that much difference as we will have insulation - it outweighs the reflection issue that a light colour would have. As far as making it a trafficable space - there is no shortage of viewing platforms in the rest of the house - I did do the sums on a rooftop garden and am tempted but at this point it would add about 8k for extra support, 8k for waterproofing and then about 20k for all the rest - although I suspect I could do this last part cheaper than that quote. The block is not short on garden space!

the whole house needs attention, Me and my youngest daughter with her Three Boys, live together in a Three bedroom one lounge and one toilet / bathroom, yes we are renting, through housing department, yes the rent is convenient as we pay a minimum of a quarter of our income, just need a better laid out house design with the toilet being a separate room with an extra toilet thrown in, in the laundry area, yes we are blessed to have a roof over our heads, we live in NSW, Australia.

When I first wrote in August 2017 we got a lot of great suggestions and comments. At the time we had accepted the limitations of the block (easements, tree, solar access etc). It is now one year later and I can tell you we found a way to move the garage to the south-west corner. This allowed us to move Beds 2 and 3 and the bathroom to the northern side. Pantry and laundry between garage and kitchen/living/dining. I think it was all of the comments and suggestions that encouraged us to look at it again from different angles, rather than just accepting the limitations. Thanks to everyone for their generosity! The solution involved working around a lovely tree (it is nice, just in the wrong spot). It is still in the way (council said we couldn't remove it) but we've opted for a long, curving driveway that starts on the other side of the block and weaves its way around the treeline to the garage entry. Not ideal, because a large portion of the front setback will now be a hard surface, instead of a garden. But if there is one thing that designing teaches you - its all about compromises. Thanks everyone. MB Design & Drafting Shara C Nik Star girlguides oklouise siriuskey genkii saragraham76 Andy Pat brizcs Mel N 3D Home Concepts suancol Caro