I have just cleared out an area under the house - a small room at the back of the garage that connects to the laundry/come storage room on the other side - a bit hard to explain the layout, but it works perfectly now as a second office/study area that I am using to gather and sort literature for further study. It has a large filing cabinet, desk, sorting table and lots of shelving for pre-sorting piles of literature which I have accumulated so effortlessly over the years! It comes with window views out to the garden and lovely water glimpses (if I open the garage door) and is lovely and cool in summer. While it is well organised and tidy, I have deliberately left it fairly rustic (read 'man cave' like) as I don't want to feel like I need to be 'cleaning and tidying' while I am there. I have a stack of classical and choral music that I play while down there ... in between listening to the cricket in summer, of course! Some great names in here re what to call it .... perhaps my 'She Nook' or 'the Reading Room'

Love the choice of kitchen - shaker style! I have that style myself and I love it. An interior designer definitely will be able to help you with design and configuration, colour scheme etc. Just letting you know, we had to put 5 structural beams in our ceiling for support and the cost blew us away, it is a very expensive exercise. You'll need an engineer to draw these up. Your draftsman will know of an engineer. Also, as a rule you have to allow for budget blowout. Everyone who has ever done a renovation will tell you. Once you start on the journey, you're emotionally involved and you want it all to be right, and you always add on more changes as you go along. It might be worth pricing things from your kitchen to floorboards to fixtures and fittings, ovens, fridges, lighting choices etc and then draw up your own costings. Builders generally don't do costings, they allow a budget for certain things, like $5 a handle, but then if you choose a $7 handle, then you get hit with a bill at the end of the job with all the extra costs. Make sure you know what the builder has allowed for when it comes to the kitchen, fixtures and fittings etc. I also agree with the others, the oven is too tight in that spot. I would swap that with the sink and put the sink in the island. Hope this is helpful. Good luck with it all, it's very exciting!

Hi there - a few things stand out to me... yes keep bedroom sizes no less than 3000mm wide, offset the door to the laundry so you can't see the toilet from the front door - yuk! Minimise/simplify number of piers by turning front porch 90º. Keep the footprint as simple as possible. With oklouise's plan, which i think makes more sense, cut 300mm into each of the bedrooms and push out towards the left into the deck. Much better use of space. If west is to the left put a whole wall of cupboards along in bed 1 and get rid of the others, and add door out to deck on the (new) north wall. Do you really need a bath? Living in country they are wasteful of water even if it goes back onto your land. Alternatively have a combined shower/bath? Babies and toddlers wash quite well in the laundry tub then learn to shower with you or on their own quite happily. I'd make the shower a big bigger (and the cupboard on the hall side) and get rid of the bath. Make sure you have excellent insulation in walls, ceiling and under floor. Consider hebel panels as flooring (also, the reinforced ones span great distances) and walls for both fire safety and insulation value. If possible look for ramp potential in case of disability and also for getting furniture into house. If you're in a fire zone make sure all windows and doors comply with your zone rating. And if you are building high up on piers make the external cladding is something that never needs painting and is minimal maintenance.

DB.....A LOT of ideas and advice flying around here.......skimming through I see you are endeavouring to establish a basic concept for a designer/architect to consolidate for you, which is great.......whilst you may think this is a logical approach to achieve the best outcome, you are arguably just throwing around random ideas rather than properly resolving/focusing on the critical aspects ........my advice is do this: firstly clearly ascertain two things on paper, not in plan or building format but in writing...that is 1. List all your requirements/needs/goals and 2. Nominate a budget. Next, identify/research a logical local designer/architect option and approach them with this information....A designer's job is to come up with an appropriate concept/solution that best balances your requirements, aligned with a budget and of course make it viable within context/site. Sure, you want a cost effective/modest result, that's fine, and that will influence the solution, but as a general comment it feels like there is massive potential being missed considering the site..it dens;t necessarily have to be that big or fancy, but you have to put the EXPERIENCE of the home front and centre of the process, and not just think of it as a kitchen or whatever laid out this way or that ....This is about an amazing site and the living experience of that and the design should be based on this and bring together your specific requirements elegantly balanced in context......The issue I have scrolling through all this is that you have all these almost disconnected ideas of building form, but you have this incredible site....... the process of resolving the spaces ideally needs to develop from cues of the immediate environment/site in order to make the most of it since you are pursuing a customised solution.....agree with MB, every project has a budget and ultimately from experience this is in general the ultimate/overriding constraint. This project could be anything upwards from $500K and it will come down to the working out how far you want to take it, and what your priorities are over various levels.......this one has seriously significant potential -make sure you make the most of it as you're truly fortunately to have this opportunity to build a home for you and your family to enjoy there.......best of luck :) PD