Running cladding in opposite directions gives a contemporary look. Many examples I've seen seem to vary the profile width each. ie. narrow verticals juxtaposed with broader horizontals. You could clad base in a recycled plastic timber-look product or composite timber cladding. (Colour stable and no maintenance). Stone could look fab too. Painting it the Farrier would definitely be simplest. You could do a contrast with the verandah floor and its edge.

I love our glass splash back. We choose an electric blue as the rest of our kitchen has a lot of timber, white and windows. Easy to keep clean, withstands the heat of the stove and you can choose any colour you like. you can even match it with an existing wall colour if you wanted to. The aluminium one sounds good, but I think that in our climate with salty air and a lot of moisture it would show corrosion spots very quickly. macymacmaples, I agree that there are a lot of choices for tile, but the 'easy to replace' comment doesn't really make sense to me. Then again, I have no idea how easy it would be to replace our splash back, which is wedged between the overhead cupboards and the benchtop - I still love it though, even after 10 years!!!

As an architect, I have previously been taught that creating a sustainable home is about designing it so that living in it lowers energy and water use. This is achieved through designing for orientation, using thermal mass and specifying fixtures and finishes that are low impact, reuse water on site, etc. However, the latest research is showing that this is not enough to impact the rate of climate change. And that what we build from needs to be considered in order to make a dent. This is because the timeframe required to see the benefits of sustainable living in a home, is a longer play than the upfront construction from low tox, low energy, minimal footprint materials and methodologies. It has to be a two-pronged approach. Choose materials and products, and constructing efficiently with low energy and low waste. Having carbon neutral homes. And designing homes that over the long term, are low in energy and water consumption, and support the health and well-being of the occupants. A project was established in mid 2017, called “The Building Code Energy Performance Trajectory Project”. It involved the Sustainable Built Environment Council and ClimateWorks Australia, and is described as an industry-led initiative seeking improvements to energy requirements in the National Construction Code. The report was released recently, and what was amazing in this report was to read that 58% of Australia’s buildings in 2050, will be built after 2019 … which means that there’s huge potential to impact their performance and the environment through better energy requirements. And these energy requirements have not been rigorously updated since 2010, despite electricity prices having doubled over that time. Detached housing will comprise 64% of the new construction between 2019 and 2050. So every homeowner has the opportunity to seriously change the landscape of energy use and efficiency in our country. There’s some sectors of the industry really pushing back against this … largely because they believe it will dramatically dent their profit margins to have to build houses with higher star ratings. Australian homes, on average, perform very poorly, and our expectations are super low. Steve Baczek, an American architect, said something about American houses that I think sums it up for Australia as well ... “It’s not that High-Performance Houses cost too much; it’s that our idea of a fairly priced home is based on a history of building houses to meet embarrassingly low performance benchmarks. Clients don’t realise the difference between built to code vs built to last”.

Hello Botn , I recently came across an ArchDaily article about a European Renovation that used Neolith Estatuario Silk (see image below) taking a close look at this material, the full slab print and image you supplied, Heatherington Newman's site and looking closely at how the bench has been fabricated; I believe Heatherington Newman UK has actually used this man made Sintered Stone (Porcelain) on this project. I hope this helps, Malcolm.