Hi all,

We will shortly be moving into our "foraverylongtime" house, and while we'll look to fully renovate in time, there are a few things stumping us in the short term.

BLUF - where to put furniture, how to do wardrobes/curtains with ceiling beams, where to put blinds.

1. How to place furniture in the living/dining/family rooms. There is a free standing wood fireplace roughly in the middle of the second window on the right hand side (the four windows are all highlight windows, up near the ceiling). There are sliding doors between the family/dining rooms, kitchen/dining rooms and entry/living room. The house faces ENE.

2. The ceiling has beautiful dark timber exposed beams, however two of these beams run into the robe space in bedrooms 1 and 2. We would like to redo the robes as they're a little impractical (maybe okay if you were just hanging baby clothes...maybe!) but the robes would need to be built around the beams. I've got some quote requests in with a couple of joiners, but do you think there's any point at all trying to retrofit a standardised system (i.e. IKEA PAX), or should we bite the elephant sized bullet and spend the money on custom joinery?

3. We want to get cellular/honeycomb blinds installed, with sheer curtains to overlay. We'll prioritise bedrooms 1 and 2 (initially the guest bedroom), but I'm not sure if we should do the W/WSW facing windows in the family room, or the ENE facing window in the living room. Climate is Canberra. The front of the house is very private and shaded, so I'm thinking we can get by with some sheers in the time being. I wanted the sheers to go to the ceiling but, same problem with the exposed beams! Is it going to look silly to have the curtains at window height, rather than ceiling height, and should I only have them the width of the windows (rather than the width of the whole wall, as I'd planned)?

Thanks in advance :D