With a North facing house the sun makes the front of house quite hot but only on those few days a year when it is over 40 with no sea breeze and I love the heat so ceiling fans work for me. The back of the house is much cooler and the winds generally come from the ocean side but can be from all directions at times as we know. On the west side of the house it is only app 1m to the fence line and so the option of having the garage on that side isn't viable. Sorry I am not up on terminology so when I said the set back was 7 odd metres that is the current set back from the front of my house to the road. The council requires 3m for house and 4.5 for garages. I have been looking more at mid century modern design and I don't really like it so I am looking at ways of changing up the bland facade to disguise the fairly flat roof line. With those in the know could I add a front porch and somehow blend the roof line into my current one to look more like this style? I realise it means saving more to afford it so on top of my current budget. I am just not sure how the roof line of the porch would look at the back end (how it would attach to my roof and look from the side and back) I wouldn't want it to look like it was just stuck on at the front. Would I carry that through to back of house so end up with a witches hat roof or is there a better way you can see this working. Once again thank you for all of your input I can't tell you how much I appreciate you taking the time to help me :)

@sirisukey. Yes my desk is under window as it is only a small room. It was running along wall under window but moved desk to right angles, facing north, so I could see door and out other window which did increase the problem with sun. I haven’t got around to buying a blind yet as it is a non Standard window size and I wasn’t sure if they were needed. Have windows on three sides and only need blind on the eastern window. Just moving some of my paintings to block the sun at present, It’s the old laundry we changed to study last year.

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.

Thank you @oklouise and @siriuskey I really like those ideas, they make much better use of the available space! I share everyone’s concern about the distance between the bathroom and the bedrooms. I am a bit nervous about plumbing though, the core section of the house is timber on joists, but the kitchen/laundry/bathroom/rumpus/garage/sunroom are all on slab. The sunroom, rumpus and enclosed walkway need the slab replaced (what is there isn’t level and was a really poor addition), but I was hoping to not have to make major changes around the existing kitchen, bathroom and laundry slab. I’ve drawn a red line around the slab section and put black circles where there is sewer main access. The enclosed walkway currently has an access grate that I was thinking of using for the bathroom in my original floorplan for the bath and second toilet, but aside from that I’d left everything where it is. The ensuite addition next to the master bedroom has a new plumbing line that runs from it to the sewer main behind the garage (I’ve very roughly indicated that line in pink) If I move the bathroom over to the left side of the house, and the plumbing needs to run back over to the right, what are the implications of that?