Hi Joy. A few questions: 1) you could have a pocket door into the pantry, unless there are reasons you definitely don't want a door? The beauty of a pocket door is it can be open all the time if you want, but if you do run noisy appliances in there (blender, coffee grinder, Thermomix, etc) you may appreciate being able to contain the noise. 2) slide out shelves under bench-do you mean drawers? Drawers hold more and it's much easier to find and access things. You could have soft close drawers. 3) it looks like the depth of pantry space is 1.4m. Is that correct? If you were to have a sink where would you place it? There doesn't appear to be enough depth to the room to allow for two benches, one to house a sink. So, would you have sink on the outside wall? If you don't think you would use a sink, then don't have one. They take up some space that you may not want to sacrifice. Just speaking from my own experience now: I have a butler's pantry, with a pocket door, with a sink (we use it every day), two benches, lots of drawers, an open pantry to house just about anything (larger appliances, etc), and a narrow open shelving unit that sits on one part of a bench (for drink glasses and spirits). You could easily have a wine cabinet built into part of your pantry shelving unit-maybe high enough off floor so little children cannot reach bottles. I'll attach photos of both sides of my pantry so you can visualise it better. We store our wine in purpose-built unit built into our hallway wall. I'll attach a photo of that in case it gives you some ideas. I hope this is helpful. Best wishes.

You could get a carpenter/wardrobe cabinet maker to look at it for you, that door takes up too much of a small space. The other thing I would consider is adding extra shelves as by looking at your photo there's a lot of wasted space between existing shelves cheers

I like tvs wall mounted....looks much neater and so much more classy. Some tvs have horrible ugly stands. Well done to your handywork it looks fantastic!

Thanks all for the wonderful comments. Ive made some redesign, and taken lots of points from you all. Big Reader: agree to have some window/lights on southern wall of mud corridor to allow light through. clerestory is a great idea Nik Star: Your suggestion make practical sense about having a dropzone once when I walk through. Ive moved that, move the coat hook/bench with below seat drawers north of it, and added a small cabinet for hooks. Ive made a deep shoe cabinet on the east side where dropzone used to be. this keeps it in all one area. OkLouise: Thanks for big advice on laundry: I know now where to put laundry baskets, and have added in that extra linen cabinet. I might just access the whole understairs from the stairwell entrance instead. The southern bench space Ill keep now: can use to drop groceries and maybe could provision space for a future wide fridge, and great idea to make bench with open knee space underneath so can be a work area. Girlguides: Ive move the tough slight so can have elbow room on either side. I have a feeling the builder would want to keep plumbing/drainage of sink/WM close together. Ive attached the next iteration. Thank you. MB