@Tribble - the situation is the same in Em Bee's part of the world as in ours. Aging demographic, lots of immigration and also internal migration, and of course offshore buying. But where I live, the issue isn't so much competition, as the inability of builders/developers to read the market. Our own builder (small builder, one project at a time, some of them industrial, not housing) told us that the two-story houses in our town were simply not selling that quickly, whereas the one-story houses were listed and gone. (He sold us our house before he tore down the old one, and sold the other house on the block about 3/4 of the way through the build and before it was ever listed. The two story house around the corner from us was on the market for 8 months). I'm not a huge fan of government intervention in housing (I saw public housing in the UK and that was not a good thing) but I do think strong regulation on foreign property buyers is appropriate. That said, I also think the builders need to get their heads together and recognize that there's a boomer population that has a bit of money and wants something different than the bog-standard two-storey box house. Time for the developers to catch up. Okay, sorry, second rant for the day.

Interesting house. You appear to have good western shade with trees in the front garden - do you plan to keep that? And your kitchen should get decent light/warmth in winter, because it faces north. Can you capitalise on that with bigger windows on that side, without compromising privacy for you and your neighbour? The back area won't get much sun in winter but will be a lovely retreat from the afternoon heat in summer. Can you open up access to the lounge room and kitchen to enjoy that more? Ditching the separate laundry and building it into the kitchen area would improve outlook and year round air flow. It would also give you more room in the kitchen/dining area to include a study nook. I realise you might have difficulty with a high number of windows and doors in the lounge, but that high window on the back wall of the lounge room seems to rob you of a lot of good things and offer very little. Removing the wall between the lounge and kitchen and putting in a U shaped kitchen would offer an interesting, open space. Harder to heat in winter (because you can't close off separate rooms) but more able to take advantage of the cooler air from the rear in summer and the northern sun and heat in winter. The study seems the obvious space for a main bedroom with a small ensuite and WIR, but it's not great to have it coming off the dining room. Without an addition I don't know what else you could do. I suggest you reduce your front entries to one very inviting one - at present you have one into the kitchen and one into the lounge. Unless you want to do something like put in bifolds or stacking doors to allow you to open up the house to the courtyard, I'd stick with one lovely (timber or a bright colour) door into the lounge and replace other doors with big windows (or glass doors that obviously aren't your front door). If you open up the kitchen and lounge by removing that joining wall, it will particularly need you to have one entry focus. Also allows you to have a lovely pathway through the courtyard to the door. Given the age of the house it is unlikely to have decent insulation - and hard to install in a flat roofed house. Might be worth replacing ceilings and inserting insulation as you do. Windows will almost certainly be only 3mm glass - consider putting in thicker glass in new windows as this can really improve temperature control (or very good floor to ceiling curtains). Good luck with this. Great project.

Our house is similar, but we are empty nesters and down sized about 4 years ago, our needs would be a bit different to a growing family, we are currently in the throes of having two smaller rooms made into one area to further open up a previous renovation to give us a bigger open space..we also have an ensuite and a combined laundry / second laundry space. The good thing is that being a brick veneer house the reconfiguring is relatively easy with modern technology and big beams. As above try and have a big open space, we have been out of our home for a month now and still a way to go, add living away from home to your budget or stay with family. I will try and post the plan but here are a couple of journey pics ..the last photo was before trying to show how the two rooms decided the space making the living room very small and a bit dark...the aim of this project is to have space for a bigger gathering than about 4 people before overcrowded. Light is really important, nice big windows essential, the darkness of the living I thought I could live with, but it did get me down, I a, looking forward to having a much lighter space

this house is such a great example of it's era it would be a shame to change it too much and the dark framed original windows and doors (with horizontal divisions not colonial panes) stained or painted a similar dark colour (including black) would be excellent but only over the original dark trim and others will make better suggestions for colour schemes but if you decide to add the entertaining areas, carport and covered walkways, dark posts, fascias, decking and pathways could make a a nice contrast with the blond bricks..DIY can be a great cost saver but having recently almost completed a similar renovation and about to start on another (we're also a retired couple) i would strongly recommend that you invest in a builder to take care of the overall construction and save money with careful planning (to avoid last minute changes) demolition (NB there's probably asbestos to consider) we saved by sourcing all our own taps, tiles, sinks, doorknobs, light fittings and happily recycled many of the existing fixtures and fittings (including sections of plaster cornices and etc and you could try painting, DIY flatpac kitchen and wardrobes, and consider prioritising the work based on your personal daily comfort eg although i suggested the old sunroom is worth renovating as long as it's safe and weatherproof the upstairs doesn't really need major changes and you could concentrate on the biggest project first OR start small and work up but it's always preferable to plan the whole property to avoid duplication and have a builder quote for the whole renovation and then you can stagger costs (and stagger out of bed each day) doing work in stages...In the meantime i'm assuming that your plans are from a real estate add so your very first project would be to make a very accurate plan of what you already own so measure every wall, thickness of walls, position of windows and doors, width of stairs etc ..even a few cms can make a huge difference in your options (eg the floor of the "study nancave" is probably lower than the living room and not waterproofed so do you want/need it enough to raise the floor, step down, enter under the stairs through a secret tunnel, come in through the old garage or leave it for the the boys??) obviously i can write ad nauseum but you will need proper plans for the external structures so it would be worth investing in professional drawings for the internal work as well your pre-planning will save time for the professionals (and your money) if you're reasonably confident about what will fit the spaces and i would be happy to revise the plans if you want to message me directly with the accurate measurements