My skirting and architraves are an F&B colour called "clunch". The floors are stripped Victorian planks, and hallway walls are a combination of stripped brick and F&B "pointing". One column rad is mounted on the brick, one on a painted wall. I had the same question as you, and went for a bare metal lacquered finish, and polished the copper pipework from the floor. It looks great and is a bit different! The radiators are from Revive Radiators, by the way, and they come in white and grey too. I recommend them - high quality construction and finish, and they perform well too.

Hi Laura, You've received many suggestions and some have been quite good. Particularly useful are the photos above of the French pied a terre with the slim line cabinets on one side. If you need somewhere to eat, you can swap the table and chairs for a bar and stools with slim cabinets either side. And don't worry about losing the panel radiator. Your plumber can install a hydronic plinth heater that connects into your central heating. I think the key to your colour scheme should start with your new cooker. Have you considered beige cabinet doors in high gloss? They would make your range look integrated and help reflect light around the room. Polished black granite (or laminate) worktop will pick up the black trim on the cooker. The arched lower door of the cooker points toward a more traditional or transitional look for a cooker hood (black) or an integrated hood. Beige and black tiles would keep the walls of the working area scrubbable. Look at metro tiles for a high gloss finish or patchwork tiles for some retro designs. Lastly, change over to LED lighting with warm white lamps. Avoid harsh white light overhead, but don't forget worktop lighting. Good luck and have fun.

We had a similar project and gutted the house. Rewire replaster all walls and ceilings. We restored the original parquet flooring and then new carpets everywhere else. Knocked through between kitchen and dining room, new garage roof. New doors and work surface but kept the original kitchen units. Kept the bathroom but put in a new floor. Did this for about £10k. Now 18 months later we're looking at extending the kitchen diner into a big open plan room going out the back as you have suggested but also out to the side. Our neighbours have done similar and we think we can get it done for about 30-40k not including the kitchen. The side extension means a fair bit of structural steel so if you don't do this then it saves a fair bit - our other neighbours have done this. We want an open but defined space so we're looking at keeping a pillar (also cheaper) then having an L shaped kitchen diner around a more relaxed sitting and entertaining area. The idea being that for dinner parties you mill around and have drinks in here before going to eat. Also can have friends round for coffee etc while the front living room remains the primary TV watching area. We'd keep a small boot room off the back for the dog, a pantry in the middle and a toilet at the front. See below for some pictures that illustrate our plans. These are mine and just awaiting our architects plans. In summary I'd get it up to a basic standard until you've got a bit more then go big, although as you say with your cheap labour you might get what you want for the money!

That's a good point about the narrower radiators. We'd probably prefer them anyway, so if i restrict my search to two column, I can go wider without completely over-provisioning the heating capacity. Some manufacturers seem to go to 1.5m wide in two-column, which is getting close to the width of the window. That's also a great point about positioning the radiators a bit higher on the wall than the 'default' height. My current radiators are 75cm, but most of the radiators I'm looking at (Acova, Milano Windsor) only come in 60cm height. Nordic Column has a 75cm option, but I haven't seen many reviews of them. But if I nudge up the wall a bit, that should make the 60cm look better suited to the height of the wall. Thanks all!