Hi MJ, what a sweet cottage. I'd go for a thermal roller blind in the kitchen as it'll allow you to get your views and light, privacy of an evening and help maintain heat inside in winter - they're also easier to keep dusted roman blinds. In the bedroom, I'd go for a double railing with sheers that let light in during the day and then thermal and block out curtains to pull across of an evening. You would be able to pick up continuous thermal or block out curtains at Spotlight/Lincraft fairly cheaply - I like the continuous as you can have your curtains as full as you like). I wouldn't worry about lined curtains again as they're just far heavier and a pain in the butt with the amount of dust that both layers of fabric collect. I've got the thermal continous curtains in our bedrooms and have machine washed them and they were far less trouble when I was hemming them. In terms of thermal efficiency of your windows look at secondary glazing options - Magnetite, Ecoglaze and Justrite off options that you might find worth looking at (beats pulling out windows and replacing them).

Trailing rosemary would look great or dichondra’silver falls would look wonderful against the grey of your garage

Hi Tania! This is an unrelated question, I just wasn't sure how else to ask so you would see my question... I saw another comment you wrote about using betta stone benchtops, and I was wondering what your review of it is? I am thinking about installing it as it's silica free and looks to be good, but there's not any reviews of it I can find-except your comment! Thanks Tania :)

We have had the same dilemma with lighter multi colour bricks. We used an interior designer to help.... We painted large sheets of cardboard with colour and put them against the brick... Bought sample pots of colours as cheaper than making big mistake... Monument was recommended against our Sandstone & red/brown fleck bricks... No blue in sight. Other idea is to match a colour in your brick to draw out that colour as per the neighbourhood photo - take a brick to paint store to match. We will use red in brick as feature colour on garden walls.