I did this ( dining room conversion to kitchen ) . But I opened up the chimney breast to hold a range cooker. Still a focal point, but more 'kitcheny'.

Two similar layouts: 1. Keep the fireplace, centre kitchen, small sofa's or corner sofa on the left. 2. Place kitchen where fireplace was, dining table and sofa's where you'd like them. No tv in either option, as there are two lounge/tv rooms already. Big island. Keep walkways open (no sofa in front of the entry for example). Move the utility door to create more wallspace.

I’m not sure about white washing the table - I think that would bring another colour of wood into a room that already has several tones of wood; the floor, skirting, architrave, doors, fireplace and cabinets are all slightly different colours and I think if you painted some of these, the whole room would be more unified and the table would blend in. If it was me, I’d paint out the architrave, skirting, fire surround and kitchen cupboard doors to neutralise some of the orange tones. My own house has Victorian parana pine woodwork that a neighbour said the previous owner spent months stripping back. Unfortunately it was very orange (similar to yours). I felt guilty even contemplating painting it, however after 13 years of living with it, I finally painted some of it. (I couldn’t bring myself to do some of the more intricate bits, so still have some 😂). It is now much easier to live with and much easier to choose colours when decorating.

Kitchen extraction is covered by part F of building regs so i'd ask building control for advice (and get it in writing) but looking at part F you need as minimum on a new build a 60 l/sec extractor if its remote or over the hob then a minimum of 30 l/sec. it also includes extraction in bathrooms, utility rooms, toilets etc. Haven't seen any exceptions for the type of house build or if the extraction is included in the MVHR system so you can get away with just a recirculating extractor so it would be interesting to update the post. The other consideration is with a large gas appliance, could this affect the oxygen levels in the room, an open fireplace over 5kw according to building regs require a dedicated air supply (air brick), so might be worthwhile speaking to either building control, gas safe or your gas safe engineer for advice.