Hi Mel, You have the right idea to place kitchen on south wall. I wouldn't mind laundry over there too if possible. The more north wall for living and sun light the better. I believe a generous pantry can be waltzed in with modified bathroom layout and kitchen having a similar layout to what is shown here. If you wish to supply clearer dimensions I'm happy to play! Also lets try to avoiding the internal toilet we can look straight at as we entry home and walk down the hall. Windows to kitchen even with fence view is excellent for cross vent, light and can have outlook to hanging herb baskets. The good old garage at the rear using miles of land for drive! The latest craze for installing by-fold doors is great but they do not allow for small inlet of fresh air such as is required in cold weather. A few windows will providing air movement and cross ventilation much safer than having to leave a door open. New models of sliders are preferable (if you can clean tracks easily) as the doors are out of the way and not a walking into hazard. Good luck. Margot

Hi renovationsnovice, Looks like a large home proposal, the ground floor plan is a little hard to read as there seems to be a number of edit attempts. Reading your initial Brief, to the extent that you have posted it appears that you might benefit from revisiting the brief, and perhaps coming to some compromise on some of the preferred areas. There may be a few items that you might consider on the drawings posted; The Upstairs areas seem not to relate to the downstairs area in terms of bearing, this could reduce some costs by having top walls bearing over bottom walls. The new width of the family room you propose at 8.5 m - for domestic construction this is a significant requiring decent size steel beams and steel columns - if it could be avoided it might result in some worth wile saving in both money and complexities. In all two story's home I always advise my clients to have an office/bedroom/guest room downstairs as it often serves for emergencies when someone breaks a leg or an elderly relative visits. (unless you can prove that such life complexities will not visit you). Its great that you have provided an airlock between the garage and the main passage, if you could locate the stair in this area you could regain some of the space lost by the airlock. There are other areas that my require editing, however it appears that you may have to settle some of the larger areas before you can move on to the next edit. I would be happy to comment/work on this project. Regards Michael Manias - mm407p@gmail.com Manias Associates - Building Designers

as usual the Real Estate floor plans are not consistent (ie the living and dining area is shown as 4.5 m wide and the kitchen is 4.8?) but, based on estimated measurements the most effective improvement will be achieved with a new kitchen by removing the tall corner pantry and the wide cabinet (and thick brick?) wall next to the fridge and installing base and wall cabinets along the fridge wall with a small base and wall cabinet around to the side of the window and replacing the island with a flat 2400 x 900 counter with knee space and/or shallow storage on the dining room side and drawers for pantry storage next to the sink cabinet i can't see any advantage to altering the laundry and if you don't need the study nook i imagine that the space can be used for extra storage

Cheers all - some really interesting ideas! Paul I think you are right about the building designer. So we had an architect come round the other day for a discussion to get the creative juices going. But I'd be really keen to hear what a designer could do and how we go about investigating. Some of the comments have really made me have a think about things. 1 - the upstairs Rumpus is currently our best room in the house as we turned it in to a big living room, pulled up the old carpets, sanded the floor, got the Terrace white on the walls, and put a nice flat screen TV on the wall. Its currently the family retreat (Mum and Dads room) but I'm thinking it could be an EPIC bedroom up there - hec we could put 2 bedrooms up there and have a 5 bedroom house. 2 - a few suggestions about changing the middle bedroom and opening up in to living - I'm starting to come around to this idea. My wife thinks it would make the living area just too big, but part of me thinks, for a 4 bedroom house and an expanding family it could be a good grad of extra space. By the way we have 2 young boys (less than 5 yrs old) 3 - Good advice about not closing the back passage way up and squaring off the house. I guess financially it makes sense to just convert in to the Laundy and not go to the expense for little floor space gain. What I did like was that it connected to the kitchen and allowed it to also be a pantry. But also I guess if we were to block the Kitchen Windows (that look on to the extension) we won't be looking at the oddity. 4 - the Reason we haven't though about expanding in to the back, I did initially when we bought the house, is that it just isn't a great extension. The house is very high at the back (quite raised to the pool) and above the house to our right. I don't think opening up the back, steps down, would give that amazing step out on to the pool you'd imagine. Plus at the two back bedrooms the floor also steps down 10inches too. It seems a bit to hard with ceiling height / floor height etc. 5 - This kinda puts me off the bedroom running down the back, massive bifold along the side of the house wiht the height of the house. 6 - I didn't even go in to it here but the Master bedroom, door, ensuite is whole other mystery to solve. We have a strange study with a stair case running up the side of it that I bang my head in to all the time! We've thought about blowing the wardrobes away, bringing the door forward, dong something there too. I think with the cost the whole 200-250 is where I think this will get to. Very rough sums - we also need to res stump and it seems like we should know what we want to do before we kick that off. I think where our heads are at is to Restump Do the Family Bathroom / Laundry Then maybe our ensuite And then tackle the Kitchen / Open plan living In that priority which also makes this a bit of a multi year project!