I guess it's going to come down to how visible you want the gate to.be when I look the black against a light house colour - the black gate is quite prominent, but against the darker house not so much I hadn't thought about a blue gate, but when I went looking for pics the ones I found I really liked As for white- it would show up against a blue house Do not think I have helped......

I love the gates you’ve found Dave. Painted white, they will be perfect. You are probably struggling to find gates for further down the driveway because typically those houses didn’t have them. The driveway led straight down to the garage located at the back. If you need gates for security then I’d suggest something that echoes the front gates. Something that will keep the kids and dogs contained but won’t visually interrupt the wonderful frontage. You don’t want to cut off the cascading look of the triple frontage as it moves deeper into your block.

Great to hear that you have had a good experience in an unpopular neighborhood. Our first home was an ex-army house in the extremely unpopular South Auckland of New Zealand. All we could afford then... and we lived there happily for seven of eight years. We loved our home and our initial neighbors, many of whom we are still friends with. But as folk moved on and a rougher element moved in, break-ins began happening, clothes stolen off the clothesline, plants, pots, ornaments, swing sets and even a trampoline! It was no longer safe to leave a door unlocked let alone open. The crunch came when youths began to harass our children walking to and from school simply because they believed it was their right to take what they wanted (uniform and shoes, food) and trying to force them to buy drugs, We moved on. I guess it comes down to; is it just an unpopular demographic area? or is it a rough area, gang related residents, drugs on the street etc? The question does not stipulate why an area may be deemed unpopular. I said above to choose the better area and this is what we did second time around, we live in a preferred area of a demographically unpopular rural town in Otago, NZ and love it here. We have renovated and will be mortgage free in our retirement. However we would never again live in an area unpopular because of the crime rate.

Love those tiles, will the led lighting provide/spread enough light onto a dark benchtop. How wide and deep will the Oak shelf be, my thought would be to use a dark specialist power point to closely match the dark tile colour or even a colour that works with your multi coloured tiles and have the power point set vertical in the top row of tiles under the Oak shelf. The cooktop is close to the appliance cabinet (can't read dimensions} as you may still need to pull an appliance out of the Nook to use without damaging the cabinet, ie: kettle steam, I think a flip up style door would add to your kitchen style. The space above the appliances gives a good opportunity to have shallow timber shelves for special things. Do you have somewhere to have your notebook open to a receipe you are trying to replicate