I do like the OnePlan en-suite option but it would be very, very small for an en-suite and I'd have to dig up the floor to add another toilet, all of which can be avoided if I just leave the downstairs bathroom as it is....I have guests who stay regularly and no one has complained yet. I think this would be an unnecessary expense, love to do it but must be mindful of my budget. I definitely agree that it would be less annoying and more private for my guests to access the bathroom and their bedroom off of the hallway and not the living/dining room, so I shall try and come up with something else for coat storage. kikiamack Unfortunately there is not enough space even when making the double doors into a single to squeeze coat storage into the corner :(

Thanks for your suggestions. We have decided to extend the porch under a gable ended roof and demolish the car port. The only remaining problem is what to do with the white wooden cladding? Also, when the car port is demolished there will be holes to fill/cover up on the house and garage wall and we would also dearly like to get rid of the white wooden cladding above the garage door! We could replace the wood cladding with hanging tiles and continue them across the front of the house. Or is there some more modern cladding that we could use and continue it all across the front of the house, down the side of the garage and across the top of the garage door? Or just render the whole of the front of the house?

Roughed up my earlier sketch in the IKEA planner. It should be pretty close to the correct scale. You could easily fit a much larger kitchen island in but I can't figure out how to do that in their planner. You also have enough space in this scheme that you could make the island a fully floating one and would have the option of rotating it 90 degrees too if you preferred. The fridge freezer is in the tall cabinet to the right of the sink. I actually think I'd want to swap the sink and hob position round now but can't be bothered to change it again this evening lol. I think in reality you'd want to just box off the awkward bit of wall sticking out by the kitchen island. Or possibly fit some shallow shelves in. You'd have buckets of cupboard and counter space and given the wall of floor to ceiling units you could get away with a much more open devol-esque scheme in the kitchen itself if you wanted. Have no idea what sort of style kitchen you were after so just defaulted to my favourite scheme (sorry!).

Ok, it’s been a little while since we left off on the garden project, however as we’re approaching spring we’re keen to get the space cleaned up for spring. To open up the space we’ve removed the middle two bar fence and relocated the beech hedging to the screen the remaining fencing. The aim being to create more privacy and blend into the landscape behind. To add security we was thinking of adding gravel and rockery / water feature (not pond) to the righthand side near the gate. Opposite create a gravel area for the stone bench and dot a few ball shrubs and a Victorian lamp for interest. Uplighter’s will be used to illuminate the hedge. In the main section of the garden add one or two trees on the section on the righthand side to create some privacy from the neighbours line of sight into the bench area. Thereafter add more ball shrubs, lupine and foxgloves to create height. Apply a horizontal slat fence (painted a muted sage green) to tidy up the bad side of the existing fence. All borders will be edged with a slim red brick to match the house and make it easier for moving. Finally to mask the shed, introduce some rose bushes and lavender.