Hi everyone, well the good news is my house is having the pictures taken tomorrow morning ahead of the first home open. Thank you all for the advice offered and shared. In the end I had to keep to a low budget as its unlikely I'll get it back in the sale price. What I want to do it MOVE it quickly, as the market is poor and we are heading toward Christmas. The first 30 days are VIP. So I did the following; -exterior eaves, guttering paint - whole house interior wall paint (grand piano quarter) and one ceiling - carpet throughout from Harvey Norman - verticals, as other spotlight/ikea options did not fit. I needed to have these made. - new lightfittings - remove exterior rotary clothes line, put an Aldi one that comes from one wall. - cleaning of pavers with high pressure cleaner (my new found friend) - cleaning of kitchen tiles and grout with toothbrush, gumption and patience (gumption is also my new friend) - new shower screen So there we have it! Thanks again for your help and colour suggestions, and multiple suggestions to CLEAN. This CLEAN priority cannot be understated. I considered staging the home however I believe as it is modest and first home buyer home and a new migrant market, it wasn't worth the spend. Fingers crossed!

Thank you to everyone who has commented - it is really lovely and so useful to have such thoughtful and encouraging comments! annab1997, the natural white is very yellow against the essastone sample we have, but does seem to work with the ticking. I'm trying a half strength version to see if that works - I also need to try it in the actual kitchen space but can't get in until the weekend (it is a building site). We don't really have any wall space in the kitchen/dining to paint as the wall opposite is full length windows. This provides loads of light to the island, but not much passing through to the back wall of the kitchen. Those small sections we do have - to the right of the bifolds on the picture - will either be in ticking (a great background to some of our artworks) or in the colour we paint the cupboards. I will definitely give the Resene colours a go as well as the Whisper White.

Hi, I agree and that it should be the ceiling colour but you could do a lighter shade of your wall colour for your ceiling colour (including the bulkheads) instead of ceiling white. Use Snowy Mountains Quarter. You will have a lot of shadows and less light on the ceiling, especially with the bulkheads, so a slightly lighter colour will help with that. Nice choice with wall colour btw. Rebecca

Paint is relatively cheap , it would tie the 2 'halves' together if done at least half way right -- that is part of my thinking on keeping the filligrees too -- they add interest and even a hint of class and a bygone era , but they are consistent across the buildings . But to do weatherboards over the brick , you either need to do 'fake' door and window surrounds , and then your doors and windows set back in ; or remove the doors and windows , do the weatherboarding and surrounds , and reinstall the joinery 'further out' . I guess you could try glueing the boards on , but they'll still be 50-60mm 'deeper' , but if you do say 50x50mm battens then weatherboard , you are adding at least 100mm to the window and door depths . A lot of $$$$ to not achive a heap IMO .