My pizza baking stones. I have individual size and one large. I'm afraid they'll break if I put them anywhere else. Most times I leave them in when I'm cooking as they retain the heat, but its not hard to take them out if I need the space. Also, it encourages me to use them more often, they're pretty wonderful things for heating up sandwiches vs frying sandwiches to melt the cheese!. I also use them for bread.

I'd love some smarter storage solutions - mine looks clean on the outside - but open a cupboard up & it looks like a bomb site!

Just to confirm I have taken the great ideas presented here as advice only and have no intention to do some dodgy diy reno's. With the exception of a couple of quirky exposed timbers as you can see in my pictures there are no other exposed beams. As you can also see from the pictures there is a large roof space on the right (east) side of the house but the ceilings themselves are flat with a slight dip on the north wall. Based on my own personal experiences I would have to agree with Two's Company that there is a tendency towards rendered brick in WA (although there are still many exposed brick houses in my suburb) while double enclosed double garages are also highly desirable. I would also agree that toilets within the main bathroom and non traditional laundries may be considered unusual by many (but not all). Ensuites with toilets however are still very common. Also due to the nature of our work we would prefer the laundry separated from food/kitchen area. For a 4x2 house it is only around 155m2 excluding carport/alfresco which makes the rooms feel quite cramped, hence the desire to open up the family room. However, as Two's Company suggests we will need to first get a builder/eng in to check load bearing walls etc as this will undoubtedly affect what we can achieve within our budget. Having said that I still excited by many of your ideas and with luck hopefully can work some of them into the budget. Cheers all :)

Depending on money, I would move the kitchen to the rumpus room, make it L-shape, along back wall & laundry wall, There should be space for a decent sized island bench running north-south. The west wall could be windows, bi-folds, sliding doors etc. A pergola/undercover area would help with the sun & could be opened to kitchen/family room. I would also make the bar a walk-in linen cupboard.