hi everyone!... we have decided to replace the cavity slider with another barn door on the outside wall sliding opposite way to the one inside the room, thought this would help tie the rooms together. we are painting the room a shade of white with white trims, white barn doors and of course the black hardware. i will add bright touches later on with shelving for books and bright armchair etc... my next decision is the flooring?!... i cant decide, am thinking timber to link with the rest of the house, but dark or light??.. and i am very keen on the parquetry style of cutting. i have these 2 samples which i really like but not sure which matches the best. i have shared some pix of existing furniture that is in the flow on living area beside the toy room. The carpet here is charcoal, although one day id love to change it to a lighter beige colour. i feel the lighter colour will reflect more light and brighten the area? but maybe the darker suits the styling better?? we have a lot of dark timber furniture, how many different types of timber are acceptable in the one area!! :) welcome any suggestions!

thanks siriuskey, The timber ceiling that u can see is only in the enclosed outdoor area. Inside the house it is standard plaster ceiling. Here are pics of the living area, it is one huge open room that has lounges and at one end is the dining area, its very hard to define the 2 separate areas!... i have wondered about moving the table to an area we have off the kitchen and putting in a gas fireplace with a mantle where the table is pictured now.. im also looking for ideas for the window treatment if any one has any!!

Thank you Geluka and Margot, the breakfast bar won't be 2 level, the app we used to draw up this design doesn't allow a single piece of bench (to wrap around the support column) hence the split level look. We will have a glass door for our mud room/laundry entrance. Probably won't have a pergola as the courtyard will be quite small and narrow post extension. I am considering moving the oven tower to the end of the bench housing the stove top. Assuming a 900mm stove, 600mm oven tower that will leave 600mm clearance on either side of the stove top. Many thanks, Ee ;)

Thanks @dreamer. I took your advice because it makes sense (I'll post a photo of our new plan) I think it's lovely that you and your husband still do dishes together, I quite enjoy doing the dishes actually, but not when my toddler is stuck on my leg. Dishwasher will probably used when we have guests over. It's actually my husband who was sold on the idea of butler's pantry but I couldn't justify it and see the point that's why I posted on here to hopefully see from other's perspective so thank you. We are a young family so always taking the kids into consideration when planning the house. We also entertain a lot, Filipino buffet style, so an island will be perfect! I sew a lot and need a big space for cutting fabric as well that's also why we wanted to keep the island without the sink. We plan to put a barn door as pantry door but we might do that later on after we have moved in and see how it goes or we might even leave it without a door but we will make sure they put in extra support in those walls for possible barn door. We abandoned the idea of window inside the pantry because I figured it will let a lot of sunlight especially it's facing north east and not good for food storage obviously. The only dilemma I have now is whereto place our microwave and deep shelving solutions for the pantry but we're pretty happy with this now. Thank you all