Have you thought about wallpaper? feature walls? Our wallpaper peals on and peals off with easy. You can do it yourself without fuss or extra cost. We also custom make our designs to your chose of colour and size for free.

Anne, go have a good look at new sinks, when I did my kitchen renovation I loved my sink and there was very little similar on the market so as I thought mine was fine I wanted to keep it. The plumber had to remove it to replace the bench tops and could not guarantee it would not be damaged because of the sealing necessary around sinks. When I saw the new ones though and later seeing it in my kitchen, the old one would have just been so wrong, it would have really let the whole kitchen down because it made the old one look so sad in comparison. A new bench top has to be cut for a sink anyway so the old one should survive any alternations IF you have a good tradie doing it. I painted first but I ended up selling the house before I did the flooring so I didn't sand. That issue was raised but don't think there is a problem, they can sand to the skirting without damage. Check with a floor sander to be sure. This is a photo I took of my old pantry before I finished filling it though. This is only half of it, the other side is mirror reversed, but you can get the idea of how each shelf can be adjusted and you can fill the shelves with like sized items. I did not think of this, the kitchen people just did it and I was so grateful because of the way it turned out. I think the shelves are about 350mm deep - held all my big things, but wasn't so deep I couldn't see everything clearly. For cleaning it was easy to just empty a shelf and take it out too which really made the bottom shelves easy to get to and clean.

In terms of the mantle - it may have been something more fancy previously. We have 3 fireplaces in our little 2x1 - including the one with the stove. Here is a photo of one of them - although it looks like the timber mantle and surrounds have been screwed on at a later date to suit the house rather than being original.

Such great suggestions from Julie, I think the key with natives is that they're quite sparse, so risk looking ratty and messy very easily. To counteract that, it's important to plant en masse, and only stick to natives (so remove the roses), so cluster say 3 of the same plant together for impact, and repeat with half a dozen types of different shapes/colours/textures/heights. The great pictures Julie has shown such as this one below that I love, show this done really well with mixing texture and colour - spiky, strappy broad leaves (deep green), soft fine leaves (grey green). Then these lower plantings can make your larger trees (existing) look more balanced. Of course, I don't know your location/climate with the suggestions below, so speak to your nursery... Use the existing larger feature trees (not sure whether you want to keep the existing tree in front of the house depending on its shape/proximity to the house), but your bottlebrush etc are great) then arrange the others around each of them to create a couple of nice focal point and more impact. Try westringia, lomandra, native violet, acacia limelight, dianella... Add in a beautiful Gymea Lily as a statement piece too if suitable climatically. And being a corner block it would be nice to plant more along the side/corner to delineate your property a little more nicely. Maybe replace the agapanthus with a row of woolly bush or even water gum (planted further away from the house at the side. It might even be worth getting a landscaper in to help with arranging them, perhaps ask at your local nursery, and then you do all the dirty work - actual marking out, digging and planting yourself.