You could fit it out with narrow shelving unit that is flush with the doors, ie. rest sits inside wardrobe. So has that build-in look. Light the shelving for display pieces, or not. Use to house a sound system. Some shelving units come with a glass door which would be good for display items. Or fit shelving with a push hinge door and use as additional hidden storage. Or as a shoe cabinet. Or do a series of small floating shelves that come out into the room if that's practical. You can get some with pull out draws. Otherwise, mount a LED light panel or backlit wall panel art?

I really like these [bed side tables[(https://www.houzz.com.au/photos/north-seminary-contemporary-chicago-phvw-vp~13970763) which are bespoke although too large for my room. Anything similar, but not as wide, in Australia..ideally Melbourne?

Hi Lyn, there are some good ideas above, however I mainly agree with the suggestions to live there for a while to get a feel for the site and to save some money for the renovation. My biggest piece of advice is to get a good designer involved when you are ready to renovate, as it definitely looks like one was not involved in the previous renovations! I see the main challenge of the new design when you are ready to proceed will be to tweak the orientation of the living /kitchen/dining zone - as the living room looks like it is currently on the south side of the house- to maximise sunlight, garden and pool views, and resolve the planning issues of the bedroom areas. And for when you are ready - and because I can't resist giving design advice - I would aim to relocate 2 bedrooms and your wish for a larger main bathroom - to the south living area. You could create a master suite out of a slightly shorter bed 3 and the current bathroom, with the current main bed reducing in size and becoming a walk-in robe. That way with a small tweak all the north spaces can become living /dining spaces, possibly moving out the middle glazed wall slightly . Double-glazed windows would be important to control noise on the main road side of the house. If you keep the kitchen and existing bathroom roughly in the same place and with 'middle' quality materials, it should be relatively economical to build the new walls and linings and remove the poorly-located ensuite, and you will have much better daylight and all-important connection to the garden and patio. However of course this is all budget dependant, and a good designer will help you manage your overall project budget and match it to your brief. Good Luck!

Thank you all for your comments and suggestions. We will go with the full bathroom do over. We were just hoping that we could get away with the least impact on our lives during these sorry times, but yes, we do agree that a patch up job will do more damage to the resell value of the apartment. This is indeed a schmozzle of a strata insurance job for a problem which occured in mid November last year. It has indeed taken that long as we had to chase up the plumbing report for the insurance, for the insurance company to send builders to inspect the damage, arrange a quote of the fixes, the insurance company to choose the quote and for the strata manager to contact the owners of the 3 appartments affected to agree to the fix. The chosen builder informed us that he is too busy to perform the work for a while so we decided to ask for a "cash settlement" which the insurance company duly rejected and requested we send them instead the invoices for any work completed through our own tradespeople.