I should also say that the plan for the dining room would be inbuilt cabinetry with a study and day bed under the window. Our dining table would then go between kitchen and laundry wall overlooking the deck/sliding door.

In removing so many internal walls I would suggest you get a professional to check the roof structure to see which walls are load bearing before getting too far down the track.

If the walls that you are removing are from floor to ceiling then you should allow for new flooring, and a new ceiling so these elements don't look patched.

Apart from these concenrns my only issue is the use of a cavity slider, they are not great in keeping the heat in or out, and can be draghty due to the air gap you need right around the door.

I would suggest a pair of hinged, glazed, french doors will do a better job in controlling draughts (and noise), and also allow you to see through to the backyard even when the doors are closed.

Make sure that you get your designer/draftsperson to draw all of your furniture into your plans at the correct scale so that you can see that it all fits, and works, and that there is enough circulation around. This is so crucial to get right in smaller homes.

Best of luck with your renovation,

Dr Retro

of Dr Retro House Calls

congratulations on your new home,as Dr Retro said glazed french doors would be good, you can get hinges so that when opened they can swing back against the wall and out of the way cheers

Good idea about the hinges, will investigate. Thanks!

I love the idea of hinged French doors and have had them in two houses (one our current house) and they look absolutely brilliant, but the practicality is that like you, J AH79, they are open 90% of the time and that makes almost two metres of wall space that is off limits and having to allow the swing room means either moving heavy furniture away from the swing area or making sure furniture doesn't encroach on the swing space even when the doors are fully open. I would rather have had the double French doors as sliding cavity doors (with glass panes of course).

difficult to make considered suggestions without dimensions and where is the fireplace and is there another bathroom and would also be good to see the rest of the floor plan, is the block flat, how high is the new deck off the ground and what direction is north?

Thanks oklouise. I don't have dimensions unfortunately. The fireplace is in the lounge room corner next to the wall backing the coat cupboard. There is another bathroom and the block is very large, flat and the kitchen and dining is north facing. Deck will be 600m high I think.

With dimensions taken from your sketchup plan a suggestion,

bathroom/laundry unchanged.

Kitchen/dining living rooms.

Kitchen has island bench, with servery to the new deck and BBQ, A wall of 40cm storage/Pantry on laundry wall. cheers

Thank you so much siriuskey, looks great! We are keen to have a servery out of the kitchen window but will need to start it at the window frame due to the driveway running directly past the kitchen wall. I am sure it will still be great. Thanks again.