@mazpt, yes of course. Here are a few more pictures showing how kitchen, living and dining, and outdoor deck and bbq area flow together. Oska kitchen is really neat in detailing; wood grain on the doors for example, are matched across as many doors as long as a 2.4m sheet allow. Floor turned out very nice too. Light natural colour, wide and long boards, laid length way all the way from front door to the back makes the space looks a bit bigger. Although it is still a floating floor, there are minimal floor movement that make squeak sound, most of the floor are feels solid. I hope that floor squeaking noise will settle over time.

@vickimpond, Coastal themes in my opinion with earthy tones, can go quite nicely with grey even though I don't personally like grey. I would suggest you research and gather colour swatches, that mirror some of the earthy colours you intend to use and then look at the colour wheel too and there is often a simple choice opposite the colour you like. You will have to incorporate the grey already in the room, in other words don't isolate the grey but link it with your colour choices obviously. Just make sure the tones are a match, meaning there isn't a for example, a blue tone in your tiles and a yellow tone in the wall colour. Look at nature, even animal eyes where you can have a grey cat for example with green or blue eyes, that will help broaden your selection and if you go all out for a coastal theme, then I think you need blue in there somewhere!! If you want to play it safe, you could stick to a very neutral wall colour, there will be plenty of choices out there that will gel with the grey and white already in the room, then you wouldn't overrun the house with a permanent strong colour that you might tire of quickly like say a blue for example. You can instead use accessories for pops of colour perhaps and to keep the grey theme active if that's what you want to do, perhaps grey cushions mixed with blue cushions for the couch if you go with a blue for example, that way the room doesn't end up looking too busy, as you are talking earthy tones mixed with the grey tones mixed with the white already there and finally another colour whatever colour that it is you choose if you get my drift, so accessories can give you those colours without being permanent, well that's my thoughts anyway. Good luck, Barbara

Just to confirm I have taken the great ideas presented here as advice only and have no intention to do some dodgy diy reno's. With the exception of a couple of quirky exposed timbers as you can see in my pictures there are no other exposed beams. As you can also see from the pictures there is a large roof space on the right (east) side of the house but the ceilings themselves are flat with a slight dip on the north wall. Based on my own personal experiences I would have to agree with Two's Company that there is a tendency towards rendered brick in WA (although there are still many exposed brick houses in my suburb) while double enclosed double garages are also highly desirable. I would also agree that toilets within the main bathroom and non traditional laundries may be considered unusual by many (but not all). Ensuites with toilets however are still very common. Also due to the nature of our work we would prefer the laundry separated from food/kitchen area. For a 4x2 house it is only around 155m2 excluding carport/alfresco which makes the rooms feel quite cramped, hence the desire to open up the family room. However, as Two's Company suggests we will need to first get a builder/eng in to check load bearing walls etc as this will undoubtedly affect what we can achieve within our budget. Having said that I still excited by many of your ideas and with luck hopefully can work some of them into the budget. Cheers all :)

Hmm...fake walls look fake BUT you can have amazing natural walls if you do this: measure up for rio - yes, the concrete stabilizer looks amazing as an upright filler between wall posts- and then you can plant (a) ivy, either green or deciduous (which looks fab), or (b) espalier fruit trees - the mini variety look great or (c) something quick like peas-which you can eat! Upright gardens are very on-trend, and with rio you can do it at minimal cost....