Hi Kathy, so thrilled to hear my comments got you started thinking of the big picture, it has been a pleasure working with this. When you are starting totally from scratch like this it is easy to become too close to the issues and the brain becomes overloaded so you can't see the woods for the trees. I think this is also a classic example of why I always tell people to live in a house for a year before beginning to decorate, as hard as it is to be patient and wait, you do need to get the feel for a house and relate your lifestyle to it. I do like your idea of splitting the room into two areas, the room looks big enough to give you this option, and to me intimate spaces within a room create a more welcoming and homely feel. When you have a good idea of the furniture you would like, put what you have in the room and measure anything else before you buy it, use newspaper or cardboard boxes the size of the pieces and put them around the room to ensure you are going to get the desired result. It can be so easy to over or under estimate just how much space furniture will take up. Sorry the green lounge in the study didn't work out, but glad this has helped you see options. Just my personal opinion, one of my joeys had a lovely old grandfather clock in her lounge room and while it was a beautiful piece of furniture to look at, I just found it a little on the intrusive side - with its constant chiming it just didn't make the room feel relaxing, one was just so aware of the passing of time. Of course this can be advantageous when certain rellies visit. She ended up moving hers to her entrance foyer where it was a stand out feature and the lounge room became so much more relaxing. Love to see some photos of your landscaping.

I'm personally a big fan of wood floors - our last house had wood floors everywhere except the bathrooms; our current house has wood floors in the hallways and living/dining areas, carpets in the bedrooms, and tile in the wet areas. We had and have area rugs everywhere (including on the carpet). And personally, I preferred the flooring in our previous house with wood just about everywhere. But that's me, not you. Unless you're planning to flip your house, you should choose the flooring you want, not what the glossy mags say you should have. (That said, you can always put underlay under a big rug on a wood floor - sheer heaven underfoot!)

I have just put a solution dyed nylon carpet right through my house. It is EC carpets langhorne hut. Looks great and is supposed to be hardwearing and long lasting.

I some how missed a whole lot of this discussion, it's all coming together beautifully, @kiwimills thank you so much for your lovely comment, if you only knew what an effort it was to get that art work hung, divorce material, he did a great job but after much loud discussion I still ended up with the large hanging not lining up with the bottom of the other frames. I always find that dark spaces work well with darker colours