Hi Bella D, Option 3 is a winner hands down. A few things to consider: * You do not want a bathroom/toilet directly off your or dining area. While that might be ok when it's just your family at home, it won't be with guests and toilet noise. * The bathroom placement restricts the amount of heat moving up the stair case. This is a major problem in open plan two-storey homes. In summer upstairs becomes unusable because it's so hot and in winter downstairs is freezing. * You could move the bathroom to the left so it is under your ensuite. Having all the water use areas in one spot (upstairs and down) reduces how much hot water travels and sits unused in pipes - it can be a considerable energy cost over a year. Locate your hot water as close as poss. This position would also block noise to the bedrooms. * The only prob is you have no laundry in this design. Could you move the kitchen towards the back wall and re-arrange a small laundry/bathroom here. How much washing/ironing do you have. I don't need a huge laundry in my modest house. I don't want to spend too much time in there. Just need storage for dirty and clean clothes plus machines. Good luck. BTW, which way is north - your whole design should have the living areas facing north and excluding summer sun from the east and west and have minimal windows facing south - they just give poor quality light and add to heat loss in winter..

In removing so many internal walls I would suggest you get a professional to check the roof structure to see which walls are load bearing before getting too far down the track. If the walls that you are removing are from floor to ceiling then you should allow for new flooring, and a new ceiling so these elements don't look patched. Apart from these concenrns my only issue is the use of a cavity slider, they are not great in keeping the heat in or out, and can be draghty due to the air gap you need right around the door. I would suggest a pair of hinged, glazed, french doors will do a better job in controlling draughts (and noise), and also allow you to see through to the backyard even when the doors are closed. Make sure that you get your designer/draftsperson to draw all of your furniture into your plans at the correct scale so that you can see that it all fits, and works, and that there is enough circulation around. This is so crucial to get right in smaller homes. Best of luck with your renovation, Dr Retro of Dr Retro House Calls

You are most welcome, I have always said that I haven't been put on this earth to "Hug" toilets, so I'am wondering who is going to clean all of these Bathrooms. Our two kids a boy and a girl had the upstairs "apartment" which they and all their friends loved. I have added a timber stair case for fun, there's plenty of space but you will need to decide what you want to do in the attic and place the stairs to open up into a tall space. I have also turned one of the ensuites into a powder room. Your Jacaranda's only drop once a year!, you used to be able to trim them by 25% each year, you would need to check with your council, we were on the lower North Shore, I think you should consider the patio side of the house and make better use of that, is the front deck something you plan on adding because of aspect, and plant some tall growing hedge ready for the apartments. Our kids Attic desk/study space over looked our pool in the rear garden. With respect to using the formal rooms for bedrooms, you will find that once you have your large family/alfresco and the kids have their upstairs space if you still feel you need it, it would make a great office. You spend most of the time there only using only using the front room in the evening for watching movies etc. I have had another play with my floor plan, I think if your wife sees this you may be in trouble, it's a Master Suite, the free standing bath in the window alcove with white timber shutters for sun and privacy control..... Iam' adding a couple of photos of our old Federation which wasn't protected, when we sold it the new owners removed all of the Fret work & posts replacing them with simple timber posts. The front rooms which we didn't use very much once we opened up the rear rooms into a family area. The room with the Bay window had a Baby grand sitting there, we sold the piano before we took the photo. Cheers

Thanks @oklouise! That looks really interesting - I really like that it makes functional use of some of the space we'd previously just assigned to walkways! Also really impressed that you've managed to fit in both a powder room, WIW & ensuite. I'm having abit of trouble reading the dimensions for the rooms/storage in the picture uploaded, do you mind letting me know what they are? How does the roof for the connecting walkway work with the way you've designed it? To avoid changing the existing roof too much, we had thought to doing a simple pitched roof above that area to connect the original roof and the extension's skillion roof In terms of your questions: - floor level: the property is lightly sloped and the original house in on stumps. We had thought to do the extension on stumps as well as we wouldn't need a retaining wall and we had heard stumps was potentially more cost efficient, although we've not married to that at this point. - ceiling: we were going to go with a raked ceiling for the skillion roof - connection: we were thinking of connecting the original building and extension through a ramp walkway rather than stairs, for easier accessibility between the 2 areas - will see if we have a site plan showing trees