@Nicky, I have done a bit of a search on Houzz and if you search for: "A Kitchen In Three Moves" by Johnny Grey Studios, you will see a fairly large roller door, designed to cover a large area, although not to the floor but that doesn't mean it can't be done. Truly, you would be better to bite the bullet and redo the floor and if you're anything like me, you will never get over this mistake with the position of the border tiles, as it has now left you in an awkward position of not being able to put in the type of doors you want to be happy. Tell your husband that the saying in this household and certainly not just about building is: "Happy Wife, Happy Life" All I ever wanted in my home that we're currently building, were wall hung vanities and hubby flatly refused to drill through the bottom plate to accomodate the plumbing and I carefully played on this displeasure, in the right company, like my granddaughter on my side ha -ha.....and finally we're going to drill through the bottom plate and I will have my wall hung vanity!!! It means I have to go under the home and re-cut the pipes and re-direct them but I can do that easy and then seal up the hole in the sub floor, again easy, just have to glue in the piece of flooring that comes out of the new hole and it is only the sub floor. Taking allot of time to build has given me heaps of time to be sure that if there are any changes, that they're made before we got to your stage but still your problem can be solved. Best of luck with your decision. Send pics. Cheers, Barbara

A sliding door is just a big window, and if correctly built in (check if the glass is the correct sized for the door if a bit old) with the correct sized lintels this should not be a big problem as the loads would be transferred to the sides, allowing the door to slide easily. Silicon spray (being a Yachtie were we use this stuff everywhere), we now use silicone spray on all our windows in our 1930 home and the windows glide across with one finger before they used to tilt when trying to open them. I would place the door head up to line up with the others and one thing you might consider is placing a window seat, (rebate the bottom channels into the window seat) and have the window seat in and out, place a cushion over the entire seat, should be fantastic and if the deck is built, than no balustrade is required. If it is a stacker slider, i would do the seat for the entire length. So instead of looking a bit funny they will think it was supposed to be like that. We should all think outside the square more often. RAM

I agree that you need a blind like a roller or roman that goes up and out of kitty's way. Nobody has yet addressed your query about panel glides: Panel glides work best on large doors where there is room to stack the panels when opened. you will lose at least one third of your left glass door panel if you use panel glides and they also project into the room quite a bit.

Hi Anne, there are some good suggestions above, in addition the question I always ask is "where is north"!! This should be a consideration too, and it's a little hard to tell how this open plan room connects to the rest of the house - is it the door at the end of the lounge, and are those solid walls at that end? (You might want to consider taking the windows further into the corner of the lounge, to ensure you can see the view from your couch/lounge chairs etc). I am quite curious about what "view" it is! Ocean? Mountain? Although a kitchen-sink window is always great, because you tend to spend more time socialising and meal-prepping around the large island, we would suggest trying to have the island face the view, or if side-on to the view, that it isn't obstructed by other benches. With your room only 6.5m wide, if you rotated through 90degrees and placed the kitchen on the long wall and leaving the pantry/wet room 'behind' the kitchen as in the current arrangement this might potentially block the flow of circulation through to the rest of the house. You could consider leaving the kitchen as-is but moving the kitchen sink bench to the other side and making this a 'tall things' zone (fridges etc) and moving the sink to where the fridge was, and moving pantry entry to the same side as wet-entry. The reason I suggest this is because when you are cooking intensely, you want to minimise circulation routes through a kitchen, so people can come and go and access the fridge (and the wine!) without interrupting the cooking. Of course it is only access to the pantry, so this might be fine too however if you did move the pantry entry to the other end this would create a protected cooking zone at the 'view' end. Ultimately, there is the opportunity to fully glaze the view whether the island is side-on or facing the view - exactly like the kitchen image posted above! (But insert your view into the picture!) As a side note, some builders only complain about sliding doors because they are harder to install and problematic to fix if the architraves need to be removed and replastering done (compared with simply rehanging a swing door!) For a good builder it should simply not be an issue and will significantly improve your access to the space, we always do sliding doors into pantries! Also ditto about the width of the pantry, 1.8m would allow a 600mm bench space on one side for appliances to be kept out, normal depth drawers under and shelves over, and a wall of 300mm wide shelves the other side, this will genuinely feel like a 'big' pantry. And finally - a suggestion to NOT put an oven in the pantry if 4doz bottles of wine are in there! Even if you are not cellaring long term wine likes a nice stable (and cool) temperature for storage. Good Luck Anne!