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

Keep the brick, please don't paint or render. Both eat into your budget (rendering in particular is not cheap), and will mean more ongoing upkeep (render still needs to be painted on a regular basis and with a two-storey house, that is a lot more work). Our house is rendered and we would never have it again. Whenever the house moves, the render doesn't, so is prone to cracking or, over time, pieces even falling off. Even subtle movement can cause hairline cracks, which means regular patching and painting. Quite frankly, most people render an older house to make it look modern, but when rendering becomes passe (which I think is already starting to happen), then the house will look dated again (and render is almost impossible to remove once its on). Also, if you're in an area prone to termites, termites can get in between the render and the brickwork and you won't see the telltale signs of "mud" at the access points to let you know they're there. As far as the rest of the house goes, I totally agree with what Timandra Design recommended.

It is getting a bit dated in the colour scheme , BUT I'd keep it substantially as it is , with that yellowy beige . Grey is trendy , but it doesn't suit the bricks , you shouldn't paint the bricks , and it will be dated in 10 years anyway . The 2 upstairs windows look substantial , because of the shutters , whereas IMO the lower smaller windows looks plain by comparison , so I would add narrow shutters . I can't make out the exact colour of the other shutters , I think it is green , but I'd go a slightly greeny/charcoal , and do all the shutters in that , but I'd also do that downstairs door too -- at least I would if it is white , not glass with net curtains , and I'm not sure which it is ? I'd also do the garage door in that darker greeny/charcoal too , and the gutters . While on that colour scheme , I'd do a wooden fence by the rubbish bins too , and obviously paint/stain in that dark shade too . And carrying on , I'd do the steel gates on the left the same . All the block fences I'd go for an off-white , just to differentiate it from the house . The last bit of painting I'd do is the actual front door , and I'd second HU's bright and happy colours -- bright red or orange or yellow , maybe a modern blue or green . The downstairs door area looks like it is paved right to the door , so I'd do 4 or 5 small low colourful pots , with plants , about where that pillar is a metre or so out from the wall -- basically , the edge of the overhang . I'd get pots in a similar colour to the 'other' ( main ) front door . This slightly colourful line , combined with the darker door , should make the main door that much more obvious . The rest is landscaping obviously , and a letterbox .

I think your house looks 'old' because of 3 things -- the beige , the roof but also the green fences . Even though the windows are darker , I wouldn't change the beige to Monument -- it doesn't feel right to me . I'd go crisp white , but I definitely would do the fences in a charcoal -- it doesn't need to be Monument or even a brand in my experience -- a $40 cheapie stain ( or the $100 concentrate ones you thin out ) is fine , because every time you clean your fence , no matter how much you've paid , some comes off , so you redo your fence every 2 to 5 years . Do those 2 , and maybe a bright red entrance door ( the door seems a mid red in a couple of pics , white in one I assume is earlier , but black in others -- maybe a screen door ? ) , and then stand out on the street and look -- you may not need to do the roof then . You say you have done or are working on the garden -- I am again making an assumption that you have conifers or similar under the bags ? Thats fine , but it needs gardens and modern plants too -- green leaves , yellow leaves , red leaves , dark branches , even grasses and cactuses . It all adds to it , but also modernises the feel -- the large bushy shrubs in most pics could easily have been what someone planted 50 years ago !