Hi Magic M new kitchens have more drawers than doors. They also have soft closers on doors and drawers, as well as full extension runners on the drawers. Your kitchen is therefore immediately showing its age because it clearly has more doors and is probably missing the other elements I mentioned that are considered standard in today's functional kitchen. So it really comes down to your budget. If you have the budget I would replace the whole kitchen with cabinets (more drawers than doors) with a shaker style profile. Custom cabinets to the ceiling. Manmade stone such as Caesarstone benchtops. You could think about the same stone on the splashback as subway tiles are on their way out. If your budget doesn't run to a new kitchen then the Annie Sloan chalk paint as suggested is a good option on both the existing cabinets and the new add on ones. Any of your suggested colours in muted tones would work.

you are super-patient!!! :) :) thank you :) I'm so sorry but I do actually have a couple MORE thoughts!! argh! there are just so many different options.... and this is a bit of an all consuming puzzle to try to solve. here they are: 1) study could become main bathroom - leaving new Bed 4 as per plan since it is bigger & a better size for guests. in this option, some area could be stolen from the study to boost ensuite size - even if it just made the ensuite 1 full metre. Ideally not requiring study window to change. 2) WC could potentially be separate either within this space OR at the back of the old kitchen (allowing for the remaining, longish hall wall to be shorter again) oklouise you may think some of these ideas are not very workable & I'd be so glad for your feedback & comment (and anyone else's comments as well), it's really so incredibly helpful - unbelievably helpful - to have everyone's input. i'd love recommendations on which ideas & options might work best for that balance between function & budget

@oklouise - that's ok, I've managed to redraw and tweak it a little as well! I think for us, we will actually not use the formal living as a formal living, but as an Office/Library. We work from home quite a lot, so we would need to look out at something, preferably a nice garden or the backyard. At the moment it will be looking out onto the side with 2-3m's of gardens, so that will be very nice :) We can create a nice courtyard area for where the formal living/study windows will look out to. The area that is marked as a study in your plan, maybe is not needed or used to create a larger ensuite and WIR. I quite like the rectangular kids zone, I can't see it fitting two sets of seating, but I can see one half of it having a drop zone where bags/jackets etc can be dumped as they enter the house. At the moment in our current house (which will be knocked down to build this), we don't have a dining space, but we have a huge deck which we entertain on a lot in summer, but in winter, we cannot entertain at all :( That is our biggest gripe! I am wondering if this problem can be solved with having a deck that can be closed off with stacker/bi-fold doors, because to be honest, if we can entertain outside in winter, we would much rather sit outside looking at the gardens then be inside! :) That also means we can shrink the footprint of the house, and thus have a larger backyard. @Paul - We actually did want a side entrance, but I couldn't think of how to work that in .... Wrap around porch would be amazing! @Ruth - The rooms will not be looking out onto a 20cm blank wall :) They will be looking out to 1m gap, thus will have a side garden. Ideally everyone is sitting together in the living zones together and not in their rooms :) Porch hardly counts as a living space! The formal living will double as an office/study, so I don't think that will count as a "living" space. Three living spaces does seem excessive, but there will be three generations of family in the household! I think as the family grows, we need to allow space for kids play areas to evolve to craft areas to evolve into studying areas then to relaxing areas as they start working. Also want some of these living areas to double up as guest sleeping areas for sleep overs and friends coming over :) Would love an internal courtyard for the master! Originally we were trying to get the master to have a view into the backyard with doors that go out to the backyard! I think taking into account what I've said earlier, I will try and do that by removing the formal dining area which we don't really need! I also wanted to have a rooftop garage, but I think that's probably too ambitious taking into account our budget. Everyone's comments have been great! Has given me lots of ideas of what can be changed/updated to improve the floor plan :) :)

For storage, I used a mirrored lift up cupboard door above the sink area in my very small ensuite with some success. We put power points inside the cupboard too - it was a very good place to have them as the door lifts up & is out of the way. I also used some of the wall space to allow slightly deeper shelves, without the cupboard jutting so far into the room. The cistern was recessed into the wall cavity, (in our case below the window) & it worked well to save a little space in the room. Photos are not very good, but I hope you can get the idea.. It worked very well. The ensuite was 1mx2m. We use vertical towel rails. They're really good & very compact, but do make sure the electrician installs them up the right way. They work on the heat rising principal & do not work well upside down as ours were installed!Hope this is helpful. Good luck.