Declaration - I am a rug business owner. The pros for having a rug - subfloor protection, noise suppression and atmosphere outweigh the cons - scratched floors (we all have a friend who comes for dinner and tips on their chair) noise (my kids constantly scrape the chairs) and cold bare atmosphere. Rugs complete rooms. Maybe the issue with young kids who are messy eaters could be the only reason you hold back. The issue relating to timber fading is another matter - timber floors darken with UV exposure, so your rug should always be moved around to make sure the fade lines are not obvious. Even if it just 10cm here and there to mix up the exposed area.

You could go wider but it depends on what type of dining furniture would want to use and how many you will be catering for. Bench seating tucks underneath and when it is being used you aren't so worried about the other space. You could always turn it around the other way [ perpendicular to the house] so the width is less of an issue as 10 metres is a decent length deck. I think even an extra 30cm would make a difference and not doing it may cost more in regret than the materials. You could go wider in the dining area only but it is a bit hard to judge without seeing the space. Find some furniture you like online and map out a plan for yourself - use newspaper for life size modelling. Good luck

What sort of easement? You can plant on it but research first so you don't plant anything with aggressive roots. Our water utility used to have a list categorising plants which are safe, plants which should not be planted within x metres, etc. Check if there's anything like that available from your water utility or council. If the plan does not have indicative furniture placement for anything else I don't know why it would show a dining table. Solar HWS or solar panels? Plants as large as trees down the narrow space between your house and the boundary with your neighbours create potential problems with roots and with leaves in roof guttering for both of you. Double glazing is valuable, especially in your winters, but for summer you want to stop the sun from shining on the windows in the first place. It might not be the most chic solution but when we needed something temporary and economical we used the shadecloth screens from the hardware store.

I hope you don't feel offended or that you wasted precious time and energy, siriuskey? I really do wish we'd reached the point of seeing your concept earlier. But I am happy with the design we settled on. Perfection isn't achievable. There will be things that we wish we'd done differently for sure, but overall I think we will end up with a home we can enjoy living in and be very happy with. This will be the 28th house we've lived in, and definitely the last (Said that four time before, but we really are getting too old to be moving! And this move is only happening because of a family crisis. We had renovated this house to be forever.). You do get a feel for the things that work best for your lifestyle after living in that many different homes. Things like the sewing nook in the laundry, for example, I wouldn't have considered years ago, but having had to run from one end of the house to the other to press a seam open, it's a biggy! And laundries today are not like they once were. They are clean, streamlined and pleasant to be in. My sewing bench will be under a north-facing window with a pleasant outlook and the washing area will be at the other end of the room. The kitchen will be very close so I can keep an eye on any cooking in progress while sewing or ironing. I have also decided that for me, the cooktop should be on the same bench as the sink - not opposite as is usual. So we have settled on an L-shaped island with the sink tucked behind a raised section so it's largely out of sight (as was suggested here), and the cooktop in the leg of the L. Hubby cooks a lot so the kitchen design ended up being important to him and he hated the main sink being far away from the cooktop. For some reason, the small sink on the island didn't work for him. Little things - but little things can be really annoying sometimes. I loved the idea of the sink near the servery window but it didn't appeal to him at all. In the end, we compromised on having the pantry sink under a servery window to the terrace, since the outdoor room won't be used a lot for dining and when it is, there will be a team to carry things out from the kitchen, whereas we will dine on the terrace frequently, especially when we have just one or two guests, and the servery there will be useful. So, final draft this weekend and on to working drawings, shed plans and council applications.