Make it a double French door to match the window in the render. Doesn’t matter if you only open one side infrequently. It will look balanced and suit the house.

I’d go French or sliding door. The sills should match unless separated by a section of wall.

if you're planning to close off the external door in the kitchen will you need the new external door in the media room to allow access from carport to kitchen carrying groceries or will you enter through the laundry? either way although the French doors look great i would use sliding glass doors that are much easier to security flyscreen and don't use any extra wall space and can be securely left open a small amount to allow for ventilation

Thanks everyone!

Oklouise- we are knocking out the wall between the kitchen and laundry and moving the laundry to a different part of the house (we are also opening up the wall between the laundry and the bedroom, which is going to be a big living room). I am putting a door onto the driveway pretty much bang in the middle of where the laundry/kitchen wall is now. I love the look of French doors but you make a good point about fly screens.. the house is in Newcastle Australia so summer insects are very much a thing.

Oklouise, this is the full reconfigured floorplan against the existing one. The main bathroom/sunroom/rumpus room need to be re-built anyway (structural issues and water damage from a poor quality add on at some point). The “granny flat” is actually just a section of the house they closed a door in and changed a bedroom to a kitchen- we are changing it back to be the master bedroom

the dimensions in the original plans are inconsistent and not visible in your revised plans so it's difficult to make specific comments but if you have to make such major upgrades i'm wondering if you have considered relocating the kitchen to overlook the rear courtyard?

As for the functionality of your new media room, I would really try yo look at it from the point of view of that kitchen transition because it will be a major part of it. Perhaps as oklouise pointed out, also reorganize the kitchen, and have some much reduced activity near the media room door, maybe a sort of seating and preping (island even?)

As for having a full height window or raising the sill a bit, why not just do extra fixed sashes on the patio door on the sides, with same full height, instead of trying to have two designs for window and door,

Oklouise yes, I have thought about that and honestly it would be my preference, but my partner has a lot of reservations. Even though the changes are quite structural, services in the diagram have been left pretty much where they are except the cooktop, which won’t be gas anyway (going with an induction one). I am definitely on the fence about it, because if we did move the kitchen, we could pull the garage and laundry back to the side of the house (there is currently about 60m2 of driveway on a block that is only 450-odd m2).. the image is what I was thinking if we moved the kitchen. It includes a butlers pantry between the kitchen and laundry

The biggest benefit I think (aside from direct kitchen/backyard access) is that it opens up a large chunk of backyard, in what is currently a very small backyard.. but I am not a pro, and I can’t articulate value add from that aside from “I have a really strong gut feeling”

I also don’t have an order of magnitude for moving the services.. is it on the scale of $10k or $20k or more like $50k on top of the rest of the work

The other thing on my mind is to create that open plan flow, we would need to remove two walls that have a second story above them.. so the walls of the second story are in red on this image, and I think we would need a column (at least one) somewhere inside the black circle, and I’m unsure about how that affects the room

From experience, I would not recommend a door with raised window next to it. I found it incredibly frustrating trying to work out window coverings for my set up and would never do it again.

This is the floorplan with accurate measurements- important note the measurements are all internal wall to wall measurements, the house has a combination of single and double brick walls (eg. The walls between the bedrooms and lounge rooms are single, but the walls between the lounge room and kitchen are double brick with air gap). The rumpus, main bathroom, side sunroom and enclosed walkway are all fibre cement add-ons. I’ve ignored the upstairs area for all plans and commentary because it is just two bedrooms in an attic conversion that we aren’t touching in the near future

I want to square off the front of the house and turn the front “study” into a wardrobe area for the master bedroom as currently the ensuite looks like a random lean-to addition on the front side of the house. I also want to remove the weatherboard cladding and clad it in cement board then render it so it is cohesive with the rest of the house

Distance from the north fence to the front of the house is approximately 2.2-2.5m, the block is square and the boundaries are all 20.1m, it is a corner block so the north and west boundaries are on streets

I think that North and East boundaries are on the street

SOUTH

EAST street WEST garden side

NORTH

street

Oh dear, yes, I definitely meant to write the east boundary was on a street 🤦🏼‍♀️ you are correct, north and east boundaries are street.

as you already acknowledged removing whole structural walls beneath a second story is not a practical option so after removing the old rumpus, bathroom, sunroom and garage my suggestion creates a whole new kitchen and living area with direct access to front and rear garden/courtyards and uses the original kitchen/bathroom for bathroom, pwdr, laundry and mudroom and enclosing the carport and moving the garage allows for the more interesting gable roof that you mentioned ... new access for the stairs could allow for more flexible use of the old living room (guest/bedroom/study) and use the old bedroom as a new media room with views to the western courtyard, renovate and extend the low north and west roofs to create a continuous line around the north west sides of the house with an open verandah (keeping cooler private ens windows) providing covered outdoor sitting area with direct access from media room and new living areas

the new roof has a gable facing east south and west

and could look something like this (with a better colour scheme) as viewed from the driveway

Not as detailed as OKL but possible suggestions, I was concerned about bedroom access to bathroom, this gives good access to bathroom for bedrooms on both floors, always best to have a whole plan

Looks like you are mo ving all your plumbing anyway. Unless you are on a slab, moving 1 m or 15 m not much diff. As siriskey says my concern would be the placement of bathroom so far from bedrooms. The plans fro siruskey and okl improve this

Thank you @oklouise and @siriuskey I really like those ideas, they make much better use of the available space!
I share everyone’s concern about the distance between the bathroom and the bedrooms.
I am a bit nervous about plumbing though, the core section of the house is timber on joists, but the kitchen/laundry/bathroom/rumpus/garage/sunroom are all on slab. The sunroom, rumpus and enclosed walkway need the slab replaced (what is there isn’t level and was a really poor addition), but I was hoping to not have to make major changes around the existing kitchen, bathroom and laundry slab.

I’ve drawn a red line around the slab section and put black circles where there is sewer main access. The enclosed walkway currently has an access grate that I was thinking of using for the bathroom in my original floorplan for the bath and second toilet, but aside from that I’d left everything where it is. The ensuite addition next to the master bedroom has a new plumbing line that runs from it to the sewer main behind the garage (I’ve very roughly indicated that line in pink)

If I move the bathroom over to the left side of the house, and the plumbing needs to run back over to the right, what are the implications of that?

Not being a plumber, I could only suggest that you could possibly link the new bathroom on the left by running under the floor and connecting up with the new ensuite connection or when the old slab is removed it could run back to the entrance sewer point?