I was 23 years old and our first home (1982) was $42,000 but interest rates were 21%!!! It was in Otorohanga NZ and mortgages were tough to get. Best decision ever though. We had second hand everything, even using an old beer crate as coffee tables and book shelves lol. Over the years we have owned only 3 homes though, and if we were to start again we have learned to not over capitalise on homes we have bought instead upgrade sooner. Finally we are ebarking on our first new home build ... bettter late than never though definately!

@mlk01, You are right about the message button, I have it on my profile but no one else seems to so that's odd! If you click on my profile for example, you will see on the top line right beside the profile picture: Your house, Ideasbook, Bookmarks, Activities, Messages. In fact I remember that when anyone typed a reply like I'm doing now, you used to be able to click a "private" button, which meant only the person you were typing to saw your comment. Perhaps Houzz can answer these anomalies?? I'm not on Facebook or Twitter, never got into it and have no reason to do so anytime soon ha-ha As for talking privately to someone, you could post your email address here as could oklouise and delete it whilst you are still able to edit, as I've done once in the past. Just not sure how long the edit feature lasts.

Hi Lah, firstly we are in an inner Sydney area, so your house is positively enormous by our standards!. My kitchen/dining is 4.6 x 6. This will be my main entertaining space. We have a separate loungeroom upstairs that will be just for us. It's 4 x 4 roughly. The plaster is light grey, whereas the framing was dark and made it look like a cave. If you really don't need the 4th bedroom, I'd be leaving the cavity slider and making it a media room perhaps?. My boys are on the edge of their teen years, I know they won't want to be anywhere near us soon....I think open plan works well when your kids are young, but as they age they really want to be away!! I think opening that whole area up would make for a giant open-plan but odd shape. Keeping it gives the option for future buyers or you to determine what you do with it.

I've been playing around with a pantry location. Originally, I was going to move the pantry into the laundry with some custom shelving and cut the laundry space in half. Now, Im thinking of cutting into the study area and building a wall there, and converting the new space into a long and narrow walk in pantry. Either that or build half a wall and put built in shelving in the study. Building the extra wall will reduce the need to cover in the door way that is currently in place and instead utilising it. Thoughts? p.s. this isnt too scale.