I would paint your bookshelf the same colour as the walls and stuff it with, well, books! I would paint the built-in corner unit to match and just use it for potplants - ivy that hangs down would look good. As for the coffee table, if the room is small, what I did in our little family room was hunted around and found a large curved hunk of tempered glass from Freedom and it sort of 'floats' and looks invisible in some lights. Seriously, I think the line was called Ghost and was very reasonable (they also had a side table to match). Throw a bit of cherry red around and see how it looks with the creams and the taupes. Here is a pic of the coffee table.

Absolutely go with the woodland grey on the gutters and fascia boards, white on the eaves only, saves a whole lot of cutting in and hides the gutter slope required for drainage. Paint the other garage door, and a new 'retro' style street lamp light fitting to illuminate your house number. Paint the house number a half or quarter shade of the woodland grey to make it easier to read, but keep it in the same colour family. Finally, a quick pressure wash of the driveway and your house will look a million bucks. For the back, keep with the woodland grey for the pergola as well, but introduce some crisp white into some occasional furniture pieces, and some soft foliage to brighten the area.

Kate: - I like the idea of a door at both ends of the new central bedroom doorway - maybe some kind of thin sliding door or a foldable shutter door might be best? - house can’t be knocked down/rebuilt due to location in a heritage conservation area OkLouise: - thanks again for doing this - I’ve loved all of your updates, they are so well thought out and hope to incorporate them all into the build - will send you a token of appreciation when the build is finished! - we have already been thinking about whether to rotate the kitchen island 90 degrees as you have drawn - i think it might look weird? but i’m not sure - theres a lot for us to process with your new updates so we'll need to spend some time thinking about them! - i’m resistant to reducing the size of study 2 as that’s the most important room for me as i will spend a lot of time there and it is doubling as a work productivity office/man cave so really want that room to be fantastic! - i thought the laundry chute was above the laundry but will need to ask the architect Siriuskey - I also think there may be too many bathrooms in the house - due to the good location of the property i think it is hard (within reason) to overcapitalise on the property so believe it will grow well in value in the long run so would rather overdo it than underdo it - FWIW the other houses in the street/adjacent streets are kind of similar to our proposed plan so its not out of keeping with the area - am still wondering about combining the downstairs powder room/adjacent en suite into one big bathroom for a bath - variable number of family members staying but 4 to 11 over 3 generations at various times of the year - the plan for the mudroom is for it to be the entrance into the house that we use most so it can also act as a cloak room too so that’s why its not near the laundry - i don’t want a lift in the house as it seems unnecessary for our needs and fi we ever ended up in a situation where we needed a lift we would just sell and downsize Dreamer: - i think we (parents) might end up living downstairs when the kids get older/noisier - they are in primary school currently Pleased to Bijou design - point taken about number of bathrooms - i don’t really have a good answer Paul Di Stafano & Dr Retro - i can sense and empathise with your professional frustrations :) - thanks for the good luck wishes, I agree we’ll need it - fortunately I’m a lifelong/relentless optimist and things always seem to work out ok in the end (and if they don’t, I’ll take it as a positive learning experience) - thanks for the insights into dodgy busy practice business models mummagabz - thanks for comment about small robes - will look into making them larger

Nerida, I would probably use Dulux Vivid White, which is better than Dulux Whisper White for trim as it is a purer white. Woodland Grey will work with gutters and downpipes, although with the yellow tones of the brickwork I would get samples of other colours in the blue/grey range which will counterbalance the yellows. Colorbond Deep Ocean and Colorbond Ironstone could be options. The underside of your verandah looks like it may have been stained timber at one stage, but has been painted brown and concealed any grain? I can't quite make it out from the photo? If this is the case then consider a fresh paint colour such as a quarter strength of your gutter and downpipe colour. There is no rule saying that all eaves have to be white. You can't lime wash over paint that conceals the timber grain. I will be in Adelaide mid-October if you want to set up a Dr Retro House Call colour consultation for your home. Best of luck, Dr Retro of Dr Retro House Calls