Option 1. I wouldn't give up a 4 bedroom house with euro laundry to have a 3 bedroom house with a big laundry. I am doing something similar. We are giving up our laundry room for a staircase up to another level. We will loose the laundry entirely so it will be incorporated into the main bathroom in well designed cabinetry, actually making our bathroom much bigger, as the area under the new stairs will become part of the bathroom floor space. I don't use my laundry enough to justify having it take up valuable floor room. As long as you have a place for your mops brooms vacuum and linen and towels as well though. You pretty much need a linen closet, sink and dryer and washing machine plus space for a few baskets. I never ever fold or iron in the laundry. On Pinterest you see these amazing big laundry rooms but they are probably in houses with masses of space. Work with what u have. What's the latest on your project - what did you decide in the end....?

@wuff -- I bought mine a few months ago while on a trip to the USA. It wasn't on holiday and had limited shopping time, which left me with empty luggage space to fill :-). I visited a discount/surplus items store and got them cheap! I'd been looking for months for some, but nothing I saw here came close to the heavy-quality metal of the ones I bought. They're made by a company called Seville Classics. Here's a link to their website page: https://www.sevilleclassics.com/kitchen_counter_top_organizer Following my return to Oz, I emailed the company enquiring about availability in Australia. I never received a reply. Much to my surprise, I recently discovered that Howards Storage World is now selling them. Here's the link: http://www.hsw.com.au/index.php?product&id_prod=6558&id_cat=106&id_dept=510#.VcDbmSkbA5s The one available at HSW is as shown in my earlier photos and is different to the ones I have. I'm not sure if the thickness of the metal is the same. Kind of hard to tell when I didn't have mine with me at HSW. Items are so much easier to access than if they were stacked. Best part is that others in the house have no excuse about putting items back into these organising racks. Here's a link showing the Seville products being sold by HSW. http://www.hsw.com.au/?product=&search=seville&op=search_products&x=0&y=0

If the front of the house is west facing in Queensland and you have glass on that side of the house, in summer in the afternoon the sun beats down on this side for hours, heating up the whole house. There is some speculation on double glazing as some think that they do heat up, better than nothing. Once the sun hits the wall you are lost. These image are for north this is worst for west. A more passive means of cooling the house is to install tall enough thick leaves to the base trees on the western side so that they shade that elevation. Problem with that is that in winter, that sun would be nice. So you need trees that drop their leaves early winter and have them back on say September when the sun starts to heat up. Some trees hold onto their leaves till a few weeks before spring, so make sure you do your research and think root barrier up front to protect your footings. Photo below horizontal external shade screens, Another method is to shade the house with screens, i said house not windows. With western sun, it is low when it starts to clear the roof overhangs, so no amount of horizontal shade devices will make any real difference. The screens for western sun in Queensland must be of a vertical nature. So screens that hang OUTSIDE the house to around say 900 mm off the ground would be fantastic. Since the sun travels around the west from more south west in peak summer to west in winter, vertical blades tend to be ideal solution and should pivot, to deal with this moving sun. In the past, Queenslanders used to have these vertical screens on castors and they moved them around to suit the conditions, for some reason we did not learn from the past. This house the screens are not shading the walls at the bottom so they would still heat up. From the plans i see you are building in brick, so western sun and bricks in summer make an ideal oven. Takes bricks 12 hours to cool down depending on the colour. All material heats up in the sun, but bricks take longer to cool, light weight material which is properly insulated is a better choice and against popular opinion, glass is also a good choice, all better if vertically screened. Double brick tends to keep a house cooler and you might as well use the double brick for structure instead of the decorative nature of cavity brick house, but after a while that heats up and takes forever to cool. Studs hold up the roof, not the face bricks. Ever wonder why the house stands up during construction with stud wall and roof? Photo is vertical blades which pivot. A good landscape architect would be worth a look and they will know how to blend your style of house with the garden. North windows in Queensland even with no overhangs, (which is stupid in Queensland) do not get sun into the rooms, but in winter it might crawl in say 2 M which is nice. What are you doing with the roof and concrete tiles heat up nicely and the darker you make them the hotter they get, Colorbond is a good choice with all the hail we tend to get, or keep a stockpile of tiles for when they break. Colour also makes a difference to heat. Make sure you vent the roof space, whirly birds, and vented eaves or gable ends, make sure you fully insulate the roof and also ceiling, and choose a light colour. choose a style of external screens or trees to fit the house. See if that makes a difference to the report which is there to make your life better and we are talking the cost of air con for the life of the house, the reports are there to help save you money, maybe a bit more up front but worth it in the long running cost of a house. Ros

We...actually mean me use gravity hooks AKA the floor for most coats , living in rental at the moment and not allowed to screw anything into the walls. We have some over the door coat hooks from Ikea which drive me demented as it means the doors don't shut properly.....currently designing our dream house, could find a beautiful space for this.....might even give up my gravity hooks which would please the other half no end