Hi there! I know how you feel so this is what I would do.... Choose the bed that doesn't fight with the white shutters eg unfortu ately the leather..beautiful, my choice but the criss cross padded buttoning will have the horizontal stark white shutters above .I would want that stunning leather bed be the hero piece. Personally if possible I would change shutters to black same as wall if they have to be there. Sorry I'm not answering your question however although it's not my favourite, the plainest wooden style would probably be the easiest (but not the most stylish) choice. Good luck and all the best!

I did get a guy out to give me a quote on cleaning and painting the roof. He said he will have to quote it using scaffolding because of the steep roof. That was a couple of weeks ago, but haven't heard back from him yet. I have seen some bad paint jobs of terracotta tiles so am a bit nervous about getting it painted. I wouldn't mind if my tiles were just slightly darker like yours rather than orange, but I do know that the darker they are, the more they will hold heat and Brisbane is hot.

I understand your dilemma, colours are such a hard thing to choose, go with your instinct, window box sounds nice or just by adding beautiful planters so they sit to the right under your window could be the answer, my friend has a light coloured Californian bungalow with an old red brick path and driveway and it looks stunning,

Don't feel bad you are like the majority of people who don't have experience to tackle building problems, If you can find a builder in Sydney at the moment with Xmas looming that will be the best thing to do as you would need to start the kitchen reno by removing any walls first. It's messy there will be flooring and ceiling to patch plus changing the window to a bifold or one that pushes up. We removed the rear exterior wall between the kitchen and a bedroom to a return verandah with sloping ceiling adding two smaller RXJ's Steel Beams to support the new opening, these were covered with gyprock and the opening squared off. Then we removed the remaining brick wall between the kitchen and bedroom, I was given the job of removing piles of bricks in a wheel barrow . The verandah was filled in with large glass windows, the floor had to be raised to match the height of the other floors, once this was done we added the new kitchen within the old bedroom.. Being in Sydney a Federation house built on sandstone foundations access under the house was easy. A lot of work but it made such a difference combining 3 rooms to make one large light filled family room where we spent most of our time. There are different ways to work with this, the builder might suggest adding a support post at the end of the island. What aspect is the house as I can imagine that the kitchen is a bit dark with having the under cover terrace outside of the kitchen and family.