I think this will look fabulous! Very modern and stylish. Looks like you gave a good amount of natural light so it wont darken the place too much.

Thanks for your advice, you have some great points. I agree, we don't want to go crazy at the start - just do the bits that we need to make the house safe/comfortable to live in (eg fix electrical, put in heating and cooling) plus do the basics to make it look "nice" inside (paint walls, polish floorboards and new light fittings like you suggested). I'm sure this will end up costing quite a bit anyway so this might be it for now! We also found today a few hidden surprises that will require attention asap, like asbestos vinyl in between the carpet and floorboards unfortunately and the fact that there used to be chimney hearths in the bedrooms that they have just replaced with cheap pine boards (not matching the rest of the boards). Having a nice garden design will also make a huge difference I think. You are right, there is lots of concrete and a bit of grass - very different from what we are used to (coming from an established garden) so I'm longing for some trees there already!

Hi Kezzle This is a bit intricate but it should make sense... The flooring industry has tried to move across from lineal metres (lm) to square metres. Normally carpet is 3.66m wide (12ft). It sounds horrendous to buy a 4m wide (15ft) carpet at $390 lm, but if you express it as $97 sqm it's not so bad. Nevertheless, the flooring industry buys it from the suppliers in lineal metres and calculates the quantities in lm also. The trick is to balance the number of joins vs the wastage when deciding the layout. There is also a little trick in the trade where they crimp the quantity but that is for another day... There are two ways of laying the carpet upstairs. The first way is front to back of the house ie 'down' the room in eg bed 1 as shown below. This way will mean you will have a join in bedroom 3 and two in the passage, 1 being in the line of the wir doorway and the other in the line of the bed 3 cupboard. Here is a rough mud map... I can't quite make out the measurements very well, so I have written down the assumed numbers in lineal (length) metres. You can change these if incorrect. In the games room, you will have 1 join which you can't avoid due to the size of the room. This will require around 22.9 lineal metres of carpet.... and at $97.5sqm it should be costing you about $8930. Alternatively if you were paying $9,600 then the real cost of the carpet is $105 sqm.... just like Dr Retro (and there is the trick) If you turn it around the other way, you will have more joins and could do it for around 21.5-22.5lm depending on how many pieces are used in joins... I would go into the shop and ask them to show you how they are installing it.... then crunch the numbers yourself... There are about 3 or 4 ways this can be done so the above is just one... Cheers

I would research your polished concrete options carefully. Old slabs that were meant to be hidden under tiles or carpet often have an uneven mix of aggregate towards the top, so when polished the results can look patchy. I have had two clients that were so unhappy with the patchiness of the aggregate mix and the micro cracks of their old slab after polishing that they tiled over the top, which is the most expensive way to finish a floor! Best of luck, Dr Retro of Dr Retro House Calls