You can have half glass and half timber which gives some element of privacy, lets in the sun & views, just maybe a compromise dilemma too!

Yes, it does come down to personal taste, but the overall look of your initial kitchen that has the concrete look tiles is beautiful. It would appeal to a wider audience too I think than the navy blue. If you concrete look tiles looked like those in the picture it would look great (as compared to a more matt look concrete tile which may not look as good). I say no to the herringbone look timber in your whole place downstairs. It will probably cost more to lay and I think it adds complexity that you don't need in a home as beautiful as an old queenslander. If you do decide on timber, I would stick with it being just straight planks. (Herringbone is flavour of the month now and I love it for tiles, but it makes a very big statement that not appeal to everyone if you are putting it in a much bigger area like kitchen etc). Good luck.

Thank you @Creative Style Interior Design and @bigreader @Creativelychallenged - Thank you for your nice words. We are indeed very happy with the result. We also went through all these stages you describe, so don't feel depressed... there might be light at the end of the tunnel. Our research stage was so long and quite discouraging at times. We've always wanted to live in a queenslander, but our house is not one. This didn't stop us on going ahead adding some character to our bathrooms design (and kitchen). We started with the idea of making these bathrooms with a colonial touch but we found that it was not easy to find the elements we wanted (tiles, furniture, tapware) at a cost that would fit our budget. We learned that the type of tiles we liked (encaustic) were VERY expensive ($200+), traditional looking furniture was also very expensive... So we shifted to a more modern design...(not very happily though), and after a while of collecting ideas for modern tiles, furniture etc.. we felt quite depressed because we were compromising... updating our bathrooms with something fresher, but far, far away from what we really liked. In our view modern furniture looked very plain, streamlined and... boring, but we were doing 2 bathrooms (on a budget) so we were not prepared to spend a fortune, and we settled with modern. We ordered marble type tiles for the floor 900x600, and wood like tiles for the walls, and booked the builder to start demolition. Luckily for us National tiles called us saying that there was an error and the tiles they promised were not going to be available for 3 more months!!! Depressed again.... It took us so long to find something we liked (kinda) and now we were back to square one. Then my lovely wife said... Why don't we give it another go and try to make a more traditional design as we originally wanted.... So to make it short... we went back online with 'refreshed' energy and pressure (demolition already started) and found many things I coudn't find before: Floor tiles @ $25/m2 Subway tiles for walls @$16 the box on sale... Ensuite furniture and basin from Ikea Main bathroom furniture was an antique dresser we found in an op shop for $150 repainted and repurposed.... etc... In the end we spent approx $12,5K for both bathrooms in total :-) So, to summarise... don't dispair... just look in this website, on pinterest, magazines, google, etc... Play around with ideas and copy!... (you'll see that our ensuite is quite similar to the first photo in this discussion)... Good luck! :-)

Nik, They're not cheap. We got them at an independent tile shop in Melbourne for $169 per square metre. Which was a lot cheaper than the big stores!! We off set that cost by using $25 on the walls! At 200 x 200 there was barely any wastage and cutting. Our big wall ones at 300 x 600 had heaps of wastage and cuts. So, they were expensive but also in many ways quite cost effective in that we had minimal waste and somewhat easier in labour. Hope this helps