Hi Angela, the extra lighting can be attributed to the opening of the space with the removal of interior walls and the selection of lighter finishes. The house does have a lot of natural light. The professional photography compared to the iPhone 'before' picture also helps! Thanks :)

You won't knock out walls for that budget. That is kitchen refit only. Don't brick up the sliding door, it will make the space impossibly dark and depressing. Better to just lock it and pretend it's a window. The real problem in that kitchen is that corner wall that eats into the available bench space. Is that hiding a water heater or something as it doesn't appear to make sense from the photo's you have. If Ii'm reading that correctly you could possibly move that wall outwards to free up extra bench space in that corner and enable a corner top cabinet. Toaster, kettle will fit there nicely. If that's within your budget I'd do it because it will fix most of the problems with your kitchen. When you have a small kitchen like this an easy way to increase bench space without structual changes is a nice kitchen trolley that increases bench space when you need it and can be parked over near the dining area when you don't. I'd replace the current stove with one that has an induction or ceramic cooktop. Because it's flush you can use the stove top as extra bench space when you're not cooking. Makes the space more flexible. Preferably put in a cooktop on the bench and separate built in oven rather than a freestanding unit. The integration will make your kitchen appear more spacious. With the small space you really do need top cabinets but solid doors are a bit claustrophobic so I'd go with a glass fronted upper cabinets so it doesn't swallow your space but still gives you storage. Also install under cabinet lighting this will help out with visibility when cooking at night. And if possible recess the kickboards to reduce their visibility or change them to brushed aluminium this will make the footprint appear more spacious.

Before Now We opened up the wall to make a walkway. Basically, closed up that laundry door near the bathroom. So now the way through the back entertaining/pergola area is through kitchen/laundry. And when you come in through the front door you no longer see the laundry but a nice recessed feature wall. Where the ladder is, that will be the pantry. I would've liked a bigger pantry but the builder made a mistake measuring and we lost 100mm. Basically made the recess bigger. But was too late as wall was build. Also, would have preferred a french door or sliding door rather than a window, but it was too much to do and we didn't want to sacrifice the space Since we couldn't make a french door to replace the window we opted for a servery window instead. I'll update again when we've got the cabinets and everything else.. Thank you so much for all your wonderful ideas. It really helped us create our dream 🙂

Wow, not only did you do a fantastic renovation on the whole apartment but you also made your clients financial needs a priority. Well done on a beautiful job.