In all honesty, you are looking at a pretty expensive renovation so it is probably worthwhile getting some plans professionally done. The best alterations will be site specific, so will take into consideration the local climate, the path of the sun, where the best views are, anything blocking the sun anywhere, passive solar design, privacy from neighbours etc. It's just not possible to make a great design without all that information and it would be a real shame to spend tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars and not get the best result possible. Given that you haven't stated where you live, we don't even know whether North or South is the sunny side of the house, so it's impossible to suggest improvements! I'd strongly suggest taking your time figuring out exactly what you want to achieve and how much you are willing to spend to do so. Even with easy access under the house, shifting plumbing will not be cheap (from memory our plumber had the highest hourly rate of all our tradespeople when we renovated), so you want to be very certain that you're doing the right thing and will love the results. If you can possibly keep the same roofline, that will help reduce costs significantly. I'd also suggest using this as an opportunity to improve your house's performance, by insulating, improving the passive solar design, installing a heat recovery ventilation system, buying energy star appliances and LED lights etc. It's all the things that you won't see in the finished house that can have a major impact on how pleasant the house is to live in and how expensive it is to run, and they're easier to do when you're doing a major renovation anyway. Good luck!

We are doing lots of renovations on this big old home. We looking for ideas for the balcony/ terrace. We would like to close it into a kitchen sunroom. Knock out the two windows to the left to open up and make a large open space . The balcony/ terrace is 75 Square meters. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated!!

we can't read the dimensions on the plans but it appears that the block isn't flat so the placement of access to the rear is affected by the slope and the reason for access...do you want/need to have an extra garage with driveway into the far back yard or just vehicle access for occasional gardening or pool maintenance? and this plan has the most exposure to the east and west which, depending on your climate, can be the most challenging to manage ...are there any changes possible to the plan or have you considered other plans for this block?

I would talk to your pool builder about the pool detail. They are the experts.