Hi Rozzi Klomp, I would not only increase the size of your kitchen, but I'd look at swapping your living and dining areas. The current layout looks to provide a very long and narrow living area (3 x 6m?). A great way to check how each 'space' works is to consider the furniture layout for the living and dining areas. This will highlight how each zone works individually, as well as how each responds/interacts with your views, the kitchen, and related circulation. Understanding how each space works individually, and together, will inform the shape and layout of your kitchen design. Considering this our suggestions are: Locate bench and cupboards along the wall backing onto garage (relocate laundry to garage 'store' area). This will provide you with additional storage and/bench space. It could accommodate the stove, wall oven, fridge etc. Increase the size of the island bench. This bench could be orientated to the view, or the dining area. This would depend on your preference for facing view or using the bench as 'gathering' space (cooking whilst preparing food and /or breakfast bar). Depending on the orientation of the central bench would it be better as an island or peninsular bench? Make sure you have adequate circulation within the kitchen (between benches/ joinery) and around the kitchen to ensure good circulation and function.

@mlk01, You are right about the message button, I have it on my profile but no one else seems to so that's odd! If you click on my profile for example, you will see on the top line right beside the profile picture: Your house, Ideasbook, Bookmarks, Activities, Messages. In fact I remember that when anyone typed a reply like I'm doing now, you used to be able to click a "private" button, which meant only the person you were typing to saw your comment. Perhaps Houzz can answer these anomalies?? I'm not on Facebook or Twitter, never got into it and have no reason to do so anytime soon ha-ha As for talking privately to someone, you could post your email address here as could oklouise and delete it whilst you are still able to edit, as I've done once in the past. Just not sure how long the edit feature lasts.

double or even queen sized quilts are my choice for single beds as they stay on better and cover the sides of the mattress and look less skimpy...measure the height and width of the beds including mattress and other bedding and trial a double or queen sized sheet to see what length looks best at the sides...the other side of the quilt can be tucked under the mattress if you have the beds against the wall and also helps to stop quilt slipping off restless sleepers ...bigger quality quilts are a better long term investments that can be used on any sized beds

Kate: - I like the idea of a door at both ends of the new central bedroom doorway - maybe some kind of thin sliding door or a foldable shutter door might be best? - house can’t be knocked down/rebuilt due to location in a heritage conservation area OkLouise: - thanks again for doing this - I’ve loved all of your updates, they are so well thought out and hope to incorporate them all into the build - will send you a token of appreciation when the build is finished! - we have already been thinking about whether to rotate the kitchen island 90 degrees as you have drawn - i think it might look weird? but i’m not sure - theres a lot for us to process with your new updates so we'll need to spend some time thinking about them! - i’m resistant to reducing the size of study 2 as that’s the most important room for me as i will spend a lot of time there and it is doubling as a work productivity office/man cave so really want that room to be fantastic! - i thought the laundry chute was above the laundry but will need to ask the architect Siriuskey - I also think there may be too many bathrooms in the house - due to the good location of the property i think it is hard (within reason) to overcapitalise on the property so believe it will grow well in value in the long run so would rather overdo it than underdo it - FWIW the other houses in the street/adjacent streets are kind of similar to our proposed plan so its not out of keeping with the area - am still wondering about combining the downstairs powder room/adjacent en suite into one big bathroom for a bath - variable number of family members staying but 4 to 11 over 3 generations at various times of the year - the plan for the mudroom is for it to be the entrance into the house that we use most so it can also act as a cloak room too so that’s why its not near the laundry - i don’t want a lift in the house as it seems unnecessary for our needs and fi we ever ended up in a situation where we needed a lift we would just sell and downsize Dreamer: - i think we (parents) might end up living downstairs when the kids get older/noisier - they are in primary school currently Pleased to Bijou design - point taken about number of bathrooms - i don’t really have a good answer Paul Di Stafano & Dr Retro - i can sense and empathise with your professional frustrations :) - thanks for the good luck wishes, I agree we’ll need it - fortunately I’m a lifelong/relentless optimist and things always seem to work out ok in the end (and if they don’t, I’ll take it as a positive learning experience) - thanks for the insights into dodgy busy practice business models mummagabz - thanks for comment about small robes - will look into making them larger