Dear Lydia, I think would be best to place the sofa facing the window or if you plan to get more than one, I would put one in the middle two on the sides. I have seen a similar kitchen to your earlier, and the sofa was facing the feature wall with the large windows. It looked stylish, well organised and overall it was a great atmosphere in the open plan kitchen. Turning the sofa towards the kitchen side-I rather see it as making out a kitchen of the entire space. Be creative when picking furniture, after you still have the ability to move them around. Add dimension to this space and of course some decoration is also needed. StJames Design Interiors

I have built in seating around radiators in both my sitting room and hallway and we have triple glazing and external insulation. The seats are designed to be able to lift the covers to let heat out if needed. It’s comfy to sit in and we have not had issues with heat build up. The rads are not as efficient this way for sure but we have had no issues with the areas being cold as a result.

Hi Charlotte. Mine was from Wrens (oh those showrooms!) but they didn’t do fitting then. My Wren shop was just over £5000 for units, hob, oven, sink, washing machine, dishwasher. Extra was the fitting, flooring including tiles and boarding it, worktop (oak), wall tiling, plastering and electrics including a new fuse box. Fuse box was £500. Total spend was £13,000 and this was 14 years ago. Shows how the “extras” can mount up. How much you spend over your initial £8000 is always a bit of an unknown unless you get the suppliers to do the lot and they give you a total quote. My Wrens kitchen is fine, still looks good, hasn’t fallen apart, but I’ve read their fitting teams are pretty poor and there are lots of complaints about them if you look online. More about the service rather than the products. Howdens work a bit differently as they only sell to trade so you need to employ a fitter/builder etc and they will do a quote for you. You could also try an independent kitchen supplier who will quote for all the work. They’re not always as expensive as you would imagine as they have kitchens for all different budgets. I hope I haven’t scared you to death! Just you could double your budget for all those extras.

Terrace the garden (as Sarah shows) is the best way so creat another level with steps, however this would probably need a builder or landscaper to do it properly. You could enlarge your current patio too. My garden is on two levels .