Hi annalisa 86 -- I see the lounge as your living room with sofa's, TV and in general, the place where you relax. The rectangular openings in the wall between the two rooms are beautiful, and are a unique feature in a home! Can you please provide more photos of each room to help us see the bigger picture and properly recommend where to place the furniture? Georgina has provided great options for the rumpus room: 1) cinema room, 2) home office, and 3) formal dining room. This is a large room with a sliding door to the balcony, which makes it a room that should be used for a purpose that makes a special statement. Do you love to cook and entertain family and friends? Do you have a barbecue grill out on the balcony? If so, a large, formal dining room would be perfect for this space, particularly during the summer when guests can go outside and enjoy being on the balcony too. Another idea is a game room with pool table, poker table, bar and small pub tables, which again, would be good if you like to entertain. You could give it a sports theme and have another TV here for friends to hang out and watch the game. This idea also goes well with having a barbecue grill and outdoor patio furniture on the balcony, so guests can move between the two areas. Or, you could make the living room a formal room and use it only on special occasions and use the rumpus room as the family room where everyone hangs out, watches TV and relaxes. You could even turn it into a multi-purpose room, where you have the family room, a sewing area (for example) and a home office. Can you tell us if your lifestyle fits any of these suggestions or if any of these ideas interest you? Christi, on behalf of Thos. Baker

Hi Charles, Firstly, I am not a designer or anything but I have just spent over 12 months planning & designing my house so I've looked at heaps of plans & I've done lots of research. This is what I have come up with.. I think you can leave it with the same layout and just extend the wall off the rumpus. Yes it eats in to you bi-fold doors but I have a plan to counteract that & not sacrifice the light & open plan. Using corner stacker doors (much cheaper than bi-fold) will open this space right up to the alfresco area. Not sure what you had planned for this area but if you were planning on having a built in bbq area it could be done on the back of the rumpus room wall (in the space where I extended the wall). I also think you will have more flexibility if you have doors entering the rumpus rather than sliding doors as you can use the wall space without having to worry about the wall cavity. I printed your plan off & had a play so check it out & see what you think. I will not be offended however if you don't like my ideas as its your house & it needs to suit you & your family. All the best with it, I know how hard & stressful it is! Shae

Hi Mel, I agree with siriuskey. It seems a shame that the table is pushed against the wall as it a) limits the seating and b) "feels" quite awkward and cramped. From looking at your floorplan, it would seem that you have the space to pull it out, to the position shown on plan? It would mean re-positioning your lights, but I think would look a lot better. The same goes for the lounge/seating area - I would consider re-positioning the 2 armchairs (one with it's back to kitchen, the other opposite with its back to outdoor area) and adding a sofa under the window. It would mean repositioning your sideboard though. Consider a light large rug to delineate the lounge area and to also bring some light and texture into the room. I'd also consider a rug under the dining table, as you have a lot of dark timber which is pulling light out of the room

Cheers all - some really interesting ideas! Paul I think you are right about the building designer. So we had an architect come round the other day for a discussion to get the creative juices going. But I'd be really keen to hear what a designer could do and how we go about investigating. Some of the comments have really made me have a think about things. 1 - the upstairs Rumpus is currently our best room in the house as we turned it in to a big living room, pulled up the old carpets, sanded the floor, got the Terrace white on the walls, and put a nice flat screen TV on the wall. Its currently the family retreat (Mum and Dads room) but I'm thinking it could be an EPIC bedroom up there - hec we could put 2 bedrooms up there and have a 5 bedroom house. 2 - a few suggestions about changing the middle bedroom and opening up in to living - I'm starting to come around to this idea. My wife thinks it would make the living area just too big, but part of me thinks, for a 4 bedroom house and an expanding family it could be a good grad of extra space. By the way we have 2 young boys (less than 5 yrs old) 3 - Good advice about not closing the back passage way up and squaring off the house. I guess financially it makes sense to just convert in to the Laundy and not go to the expense for little floor space gain. What I did like was that it connected to the kitchen and allowed it to also be a pantry. But also I guess if we were to block the Kitchen Windows (that look on to the extension) we won't be looking at the oddity. 4 - the Reason we haven't though about expanding in to the back, I did initially when we bought the house, is that it just isn't a great extension. The house is very high at the back (quite raised to the pool) and above the house to our right. I don't think opening up the back, steps down, would give that amazing step out on to the pool you'd imagine. Plus at the two back bedrooms the floor also steps down 10inches too. It seems a bit to hard with ceiling height / floor height etc. 5 - This kinda puts me off the bedroom running down the back, massive bifold along the side of the house wiht the height of the house. 6 - I didn't even go in to it here but the Master bedroom, door, ensuite is whole other mystery to solve. We have a strange study with a stair case running up the side of it that I bang my head in to all the time! We've thought about blowing the wardrobes away, bringing the door forward, dong something there too. I think with the cost the whole 200-250 is where I think this will get to. Very rough sums - we also need to res stump and it seems like we should know what we want to do before we kick that off. I think where our heads are at is to Restump Do the Family Bathroom / Laundry Then maybe our ensuite And then tackle the Kitchen / Open plan living In that priority which also makes this a bit of a multi year project!