I had a similar situation in a house I moved into years ago. I did a quick fix of painting all of the walls, woodword and the cupboards the same shade of cream. Sounds a bit OTT but it really knocked back the cupboards, which in all honesty are not something you want to make a feature out of, and created a calmness to the whole space. In your case, I would go for an off white so that the gang plug wires, radiator pipes and covers hiding the wires for the extractor fan etc., are disguised as much as possible -- that will tie in with the palest of the tiles in the splash back, and then you will have a pretty basic colour scheme of a very place colour and the dark worktop, fireplace and floor, which will stand out more. I think you need more storage with doors -- that bookshelf isn't doing anything for the kitchen. If you could get something in there that could hide lots of clutter -- even if just something cheap from IKEA, that would help greatly. Or work something around the filing cabinet that you have? A huge cheap mirror over the fireplace would bounce some light around too. If you don't want to go for undercupboard lighting, and if you have enough plug points, how about some lamps on the worktop, especially at the FF end with a floor standing lamp at the end with the chair. For the table, I would go for a table cloth and reupholster the chairs if they are not to your taste. A new blind in a much fresher colour would be great. Depending on the colour of your filing cabinet (if you use it), I think a petrol blue could add a nice vintage vibe to the chimney breast, and make more of a feature of it. I would try and go down a vintage/slightly industrial route rather than country. You may have some stuff lurking around that you could use, once you have got the base colours right -- currently it just feels a little cluttered and a bit of a mish mash. Best of luck. Looking forward to seeing some after shots :)

I like options 1 and 2. If I'm honest, option 3 just wouldn't seem to do the rest of the space justice to my mind but that's just personal taste. Have you also thought of mixing a different style/period table with eames chairs or even mixing different eames chairs? The images i've found aren't quite what I had in mind but gives you an idea.

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Whilst I understand the constraints of budget I think you are approaching the planning wrong. I think the way to do this is to decide on the layout that works best and then work out what you can afford to do now- perhaps you can make economies on purchases such as the kitchen cabinets to get a better Gliw in your home. An architectural designer or a concept planner are worth considering to help with this- they would also help you visualise the finished space too. If this were my house I would be thinking the entrance wasn’t big enough for the size of house and I would be concerned about privacy of the bedrooms at the front, I also don’t like the current kitchen being some distance from a window and being a heavy traffic area. Although I can’t see the layout properly I think I have got the sizes about right to show how I would do it. I have moved the front door to the middle of the house, shown a vaulted hall with stairs to two big upstairs spaces, shown the living space as completely open plan but with the option of using one of the downstairs bedrooms or one of the upstairs rooms as an extra living room. In my opinion there are often houses with long narrow extensions across the back that should have been better considered as invariably people need bigger spaces rather than more small rooms and retrospectively opening up the original house into this space is more difficult that building in the steels originally. So my plan doesn’t change any of the external walls of the original property but a couple of internal brick walls have been removed. I have just shown what is commercial and probably wouldn’t cost the earth but a designer would spend time trying to better understand your needs.