Hi amaliar, still a bit hard to work out even with the plan and your pictures, but I would reverse the areas, make the current sitting area, near the fireplace, the dining room and make the dining room the sitting area. In the dining room run the table across and exactly centred in front of the fireplace, not the skinny end of the table in front. This would give the dining table the slightly elevated display look which would look lovely when your table is fully set, with candles and or flowers. You could back the L shaped lounge up against and along the outside wall which adjoins the deck, I would have the L section slightly extend across the other room which would be actually behind the lounge/couch, this room on the plan is at the end of the deck, this would allow you to put one or two leather chairs and a small sidetable or lamp table to create a seperate reading area in that back area, it would also allow you to place a tall lamp behind and/or a standard cantilevered lamp over the L shaped lounge, which would look nice (example photos below). By running the lounge this way it would not have it's back to the dining room, it would make the entertaining space open so that some guests could utilise some of the dining chairs by turning them around and face other guests who may be sitting on the lounge, with a lovely big rich rug in front of the lounge/couch. It would also allow good flow for walking through the rooms, would make the rooms look larger and not cut off. Good luck.

i think the best location for the mudroom depends on how the whole family will use the space now and into the future..small children are not small for very long and i think their bags and lunchboxes would be better kept in the skullery or laundry close to the kitchen, older children would still need to drop lunch boxes in the kitchen and then take bags upstairs to their bedrooms to do homework ... the mudroom could be a place for everyone to keep overcoats, indoor and outdoor footwear, leave hats and umbrellas and dog leads and shopping bags and camping and sporting gear etc etc close to the front door and transport how will you use the garden room and the space under the stairs, is there a planned kids' activity space downstairs and what about a door between the garage and garden room or garage and western garden? depending on the arrangement of upstairs rooms maybe the stairs could be rotated lengthways and a drop zone placed along/under the stairs near the kitchen and keep the mudroom close to the garage

Is the sitting room at the top of the stairs? If so you could carpet the top riser. See attached photo.

Other things to note: Downstairs is mostly completed. The kitchen was pulled together from free cabinetry/cupboards that we got from a house demo. We are just waiting for water and electricity to be connected. The flooring throughout the ground floor is bluestone pavers, so there will be lots of rugs needed for the winter. From the kitchen it steps down into a sunken lounge, with the same view as my mum's room (lounge is directly below mums room at back of house). There is a fireplace there. This is plastered and all complete, just needs carpet. Laundry was also created from the same cabinety, its currently used as a tool room, its half tiled currently. We run on tank water and electricity, so we will need to install another tank asap. Problems we are currently facing: we are half an hour out of a main town, so trades can be really hard to get. They are also busy!! as the town is growing quickly. I have split from my tradie husband, he was incredibly skilled, and we were planning for him to do a lot of the work. This one also has big time emotions entertwined in it! We have leaks in the brickwork that need fixing - big one in the chimney, and two in my room - both upstairs. My partner was creative with building, so a lot of the stuff that is half finished we are having to interpret. Case in point, laundry window and tiling, we aren't sure how he was planning on finishing it off, and the chippy is a little confused. I can call my ex, however, I am hyper aware its not appropriate for me to be asking lots of questions. Our septic tank carked it this weekend. Need to fix this ASAP. I will keep updating, as I see this as a really valuable way to document what we are up to! I'd love to turn this into a photobook one day, so definitely a good place to store everything. Cheers Mikaela