I have just cleared out an area under the house - a small room at the back of the garage that connects to the laundry/come storage room on the other side - a bit hard to explain the layout, but it works perfectly now as a second office/study area that I am using to gather and sort literature for further study. It has a large filing cabinet, desk, sorting table and lots of shelving for pre-sorting piles of literature which I have accumulated so effortlessly over the years! It comes with window views out to the garden and lovely water glimpses (if I open the garage door) and is lovely and cool in summer. While it is well organised and tidy, I have deliberately left it fairly rustic (read 'man cave' like) as I don't want to feel like I need to be 'cleaning and tidying' while I am there. I have a stack of classical and choral music that I play while down there ... in between listening to the cricket in summer, of course! Some great names in here re what to call it .... perhaps my 'She Nook' or 'the Reading Room'

We have several problems that we need help on. 1. Sub floor. The house is raised (above a double brick garage and concrete stilts). The sub floor is floating pine, no underfloor insulation. The pine is not completely sealed around the edges. How do we approach this situation, just lay underfloor insulation, or air tight then insulate? If we air tight what do we use, acrylic caulk? 2. Thermal mass. The sub floor is double brick, half of it is acting as a retaining wall for the soil as its built on a slope. There is a stairwell in the middle of the house that goes downstairs into the garage, half of it is exposed double brick. It's literally freezing, often feels colder than outside. There is no space in the stairwell to insulate it. There is no cavity between the double brick. Could we use a reverse brick technique where we wrap insulation around the outside of the brickwork and use it as a thermal storage? Is there any point as it always feels cold because it's below soil level, so not sure if insulating will do anything. Also, in order to promote thermal storage, wouldn't it need to gain the heat form somewhere for a period of time.

Hi there, having recently been through a similar decision process for our Reno I can really recommend ordering the Dulux A4 samples. They are made with the real paint on them so you can move them around from room to room to see exactly what it will look like without having a heap of swatches painted on the wall. They have a sticker backing but I used blu-tac so 8 could move them over and over. Good luck

Looks good. The way to get the timber look without the maintenance is to use the Millboard Decking. Just hose it down.www.millboarddeck.com.au