Hi all, Thank you so much for all the helpful comments and suggestions, and sorry that it's taken me so long to respond - house renovation and work have been keeping us on our toes! This has become a long post, so a quick reminder - we were looking to renovate and rewire our 60s house to update it and also make it more wheelchair friendly downstairs for when my mother-in-law comes to visit. We employed an architect and came up with what turned out to be an 'aspirational' design (much more than the budget!) so we ended up deciding to split things into two stages: Stage One to add a downstairs wetroom for accessibility, remove chimney throughout and add a porch Stage Two to do the extension across the rear, removing the conservatory to open out a large kitchen/diner and add a utility room The layout below shows both Stages One and Two as complete. Bits shown in red are existing walls which have been/will be removed (apart from the wall in red in the seating area below which is between the existing kitchen and dining room - that's a mistake). So.....the building work is now done - hurray! Stage One is complete, we are much poorer, and we now need to decorate the whole house :-) Some before and after photos below - please bear with the terrible photography skills. The rooms aren't big enough to allow for expansive photos!: We've re-plastered throughout, apart from in the kitchen and upstairs bathroom, as we'll deal with those later. Current challenge is deciding how on earth to pick paint colours and flooring throughout.... Anyway - hopefully that gives you a sense of where we've got to. Best wishes

Thanks, Colourhappy. I'm still struggling with deciding. Not sure if I messed up the votes due to the wrong info ie we aren't having side porches now and I did forget to split the one room down on the vote option so it looks like it's one large room instead. As we don't use the dining room (only time we do is for a dinner party), it makes sense to us to put it in the smaller section and keep the original rooms which gives us a lot more useful storage/utility room. Only thing putting me off is that we need to keep the chimney in the dining area as we can't put the wood burner in the lounge as the back as it's too near a window. Doh. I might start a new thread and just ask people why they prefer one over the other as I think people just vote in the poll and don't read the thread.

Post as many photos as you can, it will really help. Colour temperature is not something that we can measure, it is a 'feel' thing so we are all affected by it in different ways. I know I am really affected by it and so could never paint a room with pale blue/grey walls unless it was south facing and made of glass. Interestingly, the trend for grey was really pushed in the industry by the same people who are now pushing warm peachy beige interiors. It's fashion, pure and simple. Another factor is that LED lights (most of which are too yellow or too blue) make cream paint look sickly whereas the old Halogen dichroic lights were very flattering. Many true grey paints are actually blue which can look cold, pure white almost certainly looks and feels cold in rooms starved of natural light. In general there are creamy yellow based neutrals, green/yellow neutrals, cooler green or blue neutrals and taupe neutrals which are usually a bit red or red violet. Avoid anything too yellow with a grey that looks very blue, they will exaggerate each other. Skimming Stone is a good colour as it has a bit of magenta in but can appear warm enough to look pleasing but isn't creamy. I also have grey tiles in my kitchen and dining room where I have painted the walls Joanna by Little Greene which is a very pale taupe. If a room feels flat then a shot of saturated warm colour such as a deep olive can really cut through the grey and warm it up. Another thing to consider is painting the skirting boards the same colour as the wall, it can then just look like a white room that is easy on the eye. This is 'Joanna' in my dining room. Another thing that can help is add as much nutty brown as possible. Brown can be a dirty orange, yellow orange, red and even purple/reds. People say every room needs black, I say every room needs brown. Hope this helps.

Hi Sarah, You can modify an existing extension, but in your case, as you said, you might need to replace the spanning beam - unless the structural engineer finds a way to extend this, but you will have a column inside the space, which might not be preferable. Full length bifolds, again depends on the structural design. You could probably have them, but not necessarily. There's plenty of design tricks with glazing to ensure it looks great and brings the right purpose. I wouldnt necessarily block the second entrance if I could. Relocating the toilet will be a game changer in my opinion, as it will open up the space even more and allow you to have a living area with dining as well. Also if you are hiring an architect, check with them the option to not extend the current side return, and modify the glazing & layout only, i think there's some potential there too. You can do plenty of awesome things with your space, the key is to have the right people on board. Hope this helps. Cristina.