fragle0 ... congratulations on the new addition to your family. Have been following your lovely changes. You probably won't have time to work on the decor for a while. Just wanted to suggest that you try pulling the nesting tables forward to be more in line with front of the chairs & placing your floor lamp to the back of them. This will give a bit more light at night for reading in that area.Also switching the plant by the fireplace & the one on the corner by the sofa.

Hello Edele, Well one way to maximise space is to reconsider the appliance aspect. So for example you could have a free standing range oven.. which will have hob and oven in 1 piece. This could give you much more space to play with, so possibly you might want a double height fridge, which would be best placed to go at the other end.. The other thing you could easily do is take out those shelves above the worktop and instead have a row of shelving on the rear wall.. Then you could have a row of cabinets all along the top. This gives a slightly different feel to the kitchen, making it more streamlined but also potentially offering you more storage space.. Re positioning the cabinets and painting them can also achieve a new look whilst using what you have.. Replacing the handles with touch/open mechanism hinges on the inside also gives the cupboards a really stylish appearance and nickel or brass (depending on colour of cabinet door) cup handle for the drawers... . If you were to take away the armchair.. you may be able to move along the table a little, add two chair to the head of the table to seat 6 and then at the other end on the far wall (where I suggested some shelving) have a butchers block or table for additional food prep... It could have wheels so you could use it when dining for serving and so forth.. : ))

I can't zoom in on your photo to get a closer look. Maybe you could take some close up shots. Alternatively you can add a contemporary pelmet box above and the blinds can be mounted into this. I would recommend having them custom made by a professional company with a quality installer. Roman blinds on a chain side winder mounted above the doors would also work well. I have some examples on my profile page.

Thanks for your ideas, Siobhan. So one of the reasons we want to open up the space is because the back of the house faces due south which results in the living room being pretty dark (despite large window). The space is also not particularly big and we do prefer more open plan living. There would be an RSJ running the width of the house so we could always add doors or a stud wall down the line if we felt we needed it. Our plan for now is to use screening to separate the two areas while keeping them open to one another (floor to ceiling shelves or vertical slats for example). The space with a "B" you see in the original floor plan is actually a small room that used to house the (gigantic) old boiler, but is now a large void in the centre of the house. This will be removed. It's load bearing, hence the RSJ. I can't really think of a kitchen configuration that doesn't need to use some of that space (what you see in the drawing is a fridge and pantry beside one another surrounded by a stud wall). Removing it, even partially, enables us to steal back some of the void for the living room. The living itself room is a nice size and width, but you're right, the off centre fireplace does make it slightly awkward to lay it out in a way that makes sense. The bay window is almost full height and beneath it is a low radiator, so no space for built in seating unfortunately. Our current thought here is to have a corner couch along the hall wall and coming down in front of the winow. Then have a console table behind the couch below the window, plants etc. We've tried it and it makes the room feel a lot better, but you then lose that extra space by the window. Alternative is just to have two 3 seater couches, one along the hall wall, and one under the window. Decisions, decisions :D Plan is indeed to have a WC under the stairs (at some point down the line).