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 :)

First consider views/outlooks and then consider vistas from internal space and also from the deck and position the deck to capture that the best. Re your kitchen, I'd try and locate it on an internal wall to promote outwards/external connection which then would give you more flexibility/options as to where to move in and out of and how you can to the external areas - whether that be double doors or whatever.... Make sure you are clear about outdoor furniture size and how you want to use it and start with that and then adjust the size/proportion of the deck to how you see it best working.......those decisions will be yours/personal as to how far you go with that. I'd also try and avoid fixing an external BBQ set-up where you you have to walk around it - think about flow and movement when you position the elements and consider furniture positioning/orientation as equal importance as any built in elements...I think you're generally on the right track if you want to keep spend to a minimum........decks are not that cheap /m2 either, so try an plan it efficiently to the functional requirements of what you need.....good luck! :)

yep, I can see this is a tricky one then and appreciate you've already worked through negotiating some of these constraints - it's always a case of more than meets the eye with these projects..... But there's still something bugging me about this one conceptually. I think it's the fact considering the full scope in that you're doing a reasonable amount (which will cost a fair bit I imagine) but it's essentially replacing and if not losing some property amenity in the process (garage gone). When you have an opportunity like this I always dig deep to find the creative opportunity to really maximise the investment. It's a relatively smallish home, but on these ones the idea is not to tighten them up further, but to open them up and increase the feeling of space more than what they are...the key is in the planning. I suppose it's the stuff that we don't want to be noticing that I'm picking upon such as the idea of a main bathroom opposite double doors to the formal living is not ideal. oklouise's option is better but it's still kind of visible from the entry.... It's like you've got the various "spaces" boxes ticked with the rooms etc but the flow/transition is a little clunky. Walking through a kitchen, then the laundry to finally get to the loo is not an ideal set-up. Maybe it's the central passage that's closing it in an may not even need to be there so the formal living is open...I don't know and it's too involved/complex to resolve in a post/on a forum as ultimately this stuff comes back to the project brief requirements. Advice I have is like always trust your instinct and if it's not sitting right for you in certain areas then it's not resolved yet.....this may need a bit of unpicking and revisiting to get the best outcome....but just my professional opinion ;) best of luck with it PD

I hope you don't mind... seeing the external pics I have a totally different idea! But don't worry I don't expect you to actually use it, and it's just a rough sketch. You don't need to extend the footprint at all in my opinion. based on the picture of the front of house your drawing is a bit out... the entry stair actually sits to the left of the front door I think. so there is a little more room there, but i'm not sure if its wide enough. So maybe there is enough room to put a hallway back in and create a master suite upstairs? The front deck becomes a private retreat and I put the bath out there! It's only accessible from the master and bed 4. If you don't need that many bedrooms maybe even leave the master and bed 4 combined and have a huuuuge master area. there's still the study downstairs that could also be a spare bedroom. I thought as the front deck is so private it could be really luxurious. The old kitchen becomes the walk-through robe and ensuite. The new kitchen goes straight under the old, and the kitchenette becomes the bathroom,accessible from the pool. the downstairs kitchen is connected to the dining and living, but the posts define the areas. The kitchen can have a halfwall with a servery-style opening between the posts, and will still have that connection. I didn't draw it in on the downstairs picture, but the entry needs to be pushed a little forward and then the stairs run up from the left corner and arrive where the original entry was upstairs. The downstairs living is accessed straight from the entry at front and opens onto the front patio, under the back deck becomes the back patio. I feel like you have less new to build and retain more of the original layout. in fact the upstairs bathroom is entirely intact.