Well, the wall is out now. To give you an idea of what we're working with, this is the space we have left. View through to the dining room. View through to the lounge. This is the lounge door (on the right) that we're thinking of blocking up. You'll see from our floor plan that this will mean the entrance hallway leads to the kitchen and dining room, and entrance for the lounge will be through the dining room. At the moment we have a sofa in front of the door to live with walking through the wall for the lounge to see if we can do that. If so, we'll block it off and make the lounge more secluded from the house, but more open from the dining areas. So, onto what to do with that space. We really like these doors: http://www.wickes.co.uk/Wickes-Newland-Internal-French-Doors-Pine-Glazed-8-Lite-1981x1170mm/p/208500 but I'm worried about the fact that they're unfinished. So when painting white, I wont be able to get the wood behind the glass very well, which means when looking through the glass, you'll see the back of the wood (if that makes sense?) I'm very fussy like this. So, thoughts? We have decided on Pavilion Grey from Farrow and Ball for the lounge and dining room, the architrave, skirting and coving will be like this: https://www.houseofhome.com.au/dbimages/news/fn_large/435/wide/Architraves_and_skirting_profiles.jpg Would love to hear your opinions. Adam

I think solid hinged doors will be sturdy and a bit more soundproof than the current ones. I'd aim for a design that you can open all the way whenever you want to have the two rooms connected.

Hi OnePlan hope you're well! I think the table needs to be centred to the doors. In our current dining room we have a sideboard just under a meter behind the dining table and I find it a pain getting past to go to the utility. At least in the Plan A that wouldn't be a problem though. The table we have is extendable so can be 132 x 92, 165 x 92 or 198 x 92. If we had just one leaf in 165 x 92 do you think it looks odd against the big island? 132 x 92 looks ridiculous. LOL.

We have a large rooflight at one end of our 8m south facing extension which gets the morning east sun and another at the opposite end - so nothing in the middle. I don’t find the rooflights too hot - they are just normal triple glazed lights. The hot part is the doors as they are fully glazed across the whole back ie 6m. We get sun all day and it can get very hot. I would initially suggest looking at solar coating (the proper stuff isn’t cheap - maybe £140-180 per door panel?) to reduce the heat in the first place. Not so bad if you don’t have that many windows/doors. Alternatively individual roller blinds for each panel that are designed to reduce the heat but still alow sunlight in. You can lower them midday when it’s too hot. (we will be doing this for next year as it’s cheaper than building a full permanent structure!) Or a wind out awning of course which is more flexible.