Michelle, I'm not a builder but am building with hubby, a single storey limestone home. Our daughter built a two storey limestone home just down the road, that hubby also built for her and the extra foundations she had to install would be at least twice more than we have for our single storey, not to mention that there were allot of short walled founds leading off the perimeter of her home to assist in less likelihood of wall roll out and the inspector called it. Cost for you, will depend on whether you have adequate foundations to carry a second storey and usually that is never the case. All the lower walls will need double the support and it usually has to carry on down to the foundations, depending on whether you have a solid concrete slab or concrete stumps that are accessible. This would mean most of the plaster being removed and hoping that you find no nasty surprises as far as the condition of the existing frame in the home, the builder would as I mentioned, have to add structural supports to carry the second storey. Most often, second stories are built with a hardiplank type exterior and certainly not brickwork as you would then difinitely have to have extra foundations in for such a reno and you would have to start asking yourself if it isn't better to demolish as this type of reno can be extremely costly. You might be lucky but probably highly unlikely, to have adequate structional integrity to be able to add a second storey, without everything I have mentioned to be skipped in any way. I hazzard a guess that such a reno would cost you $250,000+ and maybe more. Would love to know what you finally decide to do and your builders estimate. Good luck. Cheers, Barbara

Hi Kathy, so thrilled to hear my comments got you started thinking of the big picture, it has been a pleasure working with this. When you are starting totally from scratch like this it is easy to become too close to the issues and the brain becomes overloaded so you can't see the woods for the trees. I think this is also a classic example of why I always tell people to live in a house for a year before beginning to decorate, as hard as it is to be patient and wait, you do need to get the feel for a house and relate your lifestyle to it. I do like your idea of splitting the room into two areas, the room looks big enough to give you this option, and to me intimate spaces within a room create a more welcoming and homely feel. When you have a good idea of the furniture you would like, put what you have in the room and measure anything else before you buy it, use newspaper or cardboard boxes the size of the pieces and put them around the room to ensure you are going to get the desired result. It can be so easy to over or under estimate just how much space furniture will take up. Sorry the green lounge in the study didn't work out, but glad this has helped you see options. Just my personal opinion, one of my joeys had a lovely old grandfather clock in her lounge room and while it was a beautiful piece of furniture to look at, I just found it a little on the intrusive side - with its constant chiming it just didn't make the room feel relaxing, one was just so aware of the passing of time. Of course this can be advantageous when certain rellies visit. She ended up moving hers to her entrance foyer where it was a stand out feature and the lounge room became so much more relaxing. Love to see some photos of your landscaping.

If there is a storage cupboard underneath the stairs, then I think its best to let go of the open risers. At the end of the day when it comes to stairs, I think you need to make simple decisions, don't complicate it. Sometimes spaces fuss over stairs and they can look great, but they are very impractical, expensive and dangerous. I think if you live in a house with no kids and no elderly, then you can lash out and go for something with more design risk. I think the timber stair profile shown in your picture looks great, and would work well with your vertical timber beam balustrade. However timber stairs can be noisy and quite slippery. If you are using carpet upstairs then you could consider running carpet all the way down the stairs. Don't do the half half thing. In order to finish the edge of the stairs neatly, I would edge the stairs with the plaster finish continuing from the cupboard wall, all the way up to the edge of the stairs and making an edge profile for the carpet to be neatly tucked into. By doing this you could still get the stepping silhouette which would look very cool. Then the beams could run off the plaster surface and not the edge of the carpet. Ultimately carpet may be annoying to have to vacuum, but it is a lot quieter, considerably cheaper and safer than timber stairs. Hope that helps. Good luck with it.

The blue you add has to be very soft and beachy and I find looks stunning with brown but as I said HAS to be kept soft would work as well with the earthy beige/sand tone as well as the white, once again it has to be something you love and are happy with so bring home swatches or keep an eye on pinterest as well as Houzz pics to see if you can find similar, it's your home and space it has to feel like you and make you happy perhaps even get some paint swatches to play about with...I know changing things is a big decision so good luck again.