All stone in the home is a sign of quality. Stone surfaces are very "forgiving" and best of all, can be restored, polished or repaired. Consider the durability of natural and engineered stone in the home. The Marble Man specialise in stone polishing, repairs and sealing. www.themarbleman.com.au 1300 627 626 will always recommend stone!

I quite like the idea of concrete sleepers for your retaining wall. They keep the modern mood. Not sold on Ridgi's faux timber look, though. If your drainage profile would allow it, continuing the brick of the pillars would look quite good, too. For me, the biggest landscape issue is the almighty fight happening between the two different sides of the driveway. You have the stick-up-the-rear formality of the camellia hedge fighting the looseness of the grass and shrubs on the other side. You need to decide on a single mood and go with that. Really!! I'd go, actually, with a loose boulder or gabion wall with a planting behind it similar to that on the left (narrower) side of the driveway. Have a think about what you actually use that front lawn for, and if it's only there to keep the dirt from showing, add some trees and shrubs and underplanting. Shout yourself a tame forest! This will take up a lot of water if your climate's a bit wet, and stabilise the slope, too.

Hi all, Sorry for the slow replies and thanks for the input so far. From what I've read online a re-inforced besser block wall should be about $600 p/sqm including footings in Sydney (Hornsby shire council area). Given the wall is 1m x 10m it should be let's say $7k including design and DA or am I way off? I'd also need to dispose of the current wall + footings but I could probably give the blocks away. The paved area is about 40sqm. Would it be safe to assume $200 p/sqm for concrete base, paver supply (travertine) and install (coping and surrounds)? So the wall and and paving would cost let's say $16k + fencing + cladding. This isn't too bad considering how much better it would look and the value it would add to the house. I like the flexibility the besser would give - render, cladding etc are all options. I'm not sure how bad it is structurally it just has a couple of spots where I can see the blocks have pulled apart over time. Below are some pictures of the bad spots. Also looking at the Amber website it says the maximum courses is maximum non reinforced wall height of 972mm (6 courses). It looks like my wall is actually 7 courses un-reinforced. The wall and pool was built back in 2003. I definitely think planting in front of the wall would help, as would removing the lights but I'm in two minds about whether to bite the bullet and do it properly or just hide it.

Thank you so much everyone for taking the time to respond. Your first photo siriuskey is the colour scheme I'd love to go with so good to hear that you'd think it would match with the blonde brick. I also like the shale grey roof idea butterflyroof and you're right that you don't see much of the roof at all (mainly when looking out the upstairs bedrooms). The olive green is definitely another possibility to look at oklouise and I've made a note to use 'mid-century' in search terms. Definitely plan to pressure clean bricks and a bit relieved to hear that leaving them is the better option. I'm still finding it hard to imagine a darker grey cladding like monument with the blonde brick debluc but it's certainly been suggested a few times so I'll keep searching for inspiration. Thanks again :) (attached is a photo of a house near us that I like and that has a brownish tinge to the cladding that would hopefully work with our bricks as it seems to work with their sandstone - maybe dune colourbond?)