I think the first layout is fine. You might want to consider moving the door for the storage room of the master bedroom so that it opens into the hall. That way the kids can use it for overflow storage. Also, that hallway is big enough that I think it could hold a large armour, providing more closet space. (There's no need to sleep in the same room as your clothes, so long as they're not too far off.) Also, don't forget that while the drawing shows kids in double beds, this need not be the case, so there will be more room for furniture (dressers or whatever) in their rooms. Finally, that step to bedroom 4 will not be odd at all. I've seen it in other homes. It looks clumsy in the drawing but it isn't. What you'll see when you come up the stairs is a bedroom door on a slight diagonal. It's only an odd jagged step if you walk like a robot, in straight lines along the wall, which is what your eye is doing on the drawing but you won't do in real life.

Try this. Hang the television to the right of the wood stove on the wall opposite the french doors. Use the wall with the high windows for a looong sofa and add two chairs across / angled slightly - low back so you can look over one to television. use console / sofa table on entry /bed door wall just past where entry door opens so you have a lay down surface. Forget glass, it isn't for this era and won't make it feel bigger. Paint ALL french doors inside and out and small windows and entry door same color and trim same color too. Try a charcoal rather than a black - something in the blue-green-gray shades like new providence navy. do all the walls in kitchen and living in a warm white - this tone has the wood as an undertone - http://www.benjaminmoore.com/en-us/paint-color/woodash then, for the cabinets . . do a bungalow thing and go deeper on the cabinets to a classic drabware tone - with the wood walls and floors / try bm bracken biscuit http://www.benjaminmoore.com/en-us/paint-color/brackenbiscuit these will all go together like gangbusters, keep it light and bright but interesting and work with a new blue green gray back door in a tone like bm beach glass http://www.benjaminmoore.com/en-us/paint-color/beachglass templeton gray as a counterpoint on some craigslist piece of furniture . . add warm undertone tan and oatmeal nubby tweed upholstery to start . . the teal navy gray will work with the black iron stove and accents without going black. start keeping the left door to the kitchen closed and get a door stop to hold the other one open permanently . . this will work because you need a little more wall to make the tv work well - in the kitchen, pull your table away from the wall just a tad - consider a padded bench on the wall to provide a kind of sitting space in there and put the chairs across - if you shift your television to the wall (high enough the heat is not an issue , you can still have big speakers work well - and remote the media equipment - run the wire and patch the holes. Hang it mid-height - eye level when you sit plus 15 degrees . . check out the amazing sconces you can put on the entry wall - shades of light petersik pendant with home-made trim wood brace to pump it out from the wall since the power is high? over the console? round wood table in middle - even a hd butcherblock round on a painted drum base in trim tone? With those tones - teal gray, biscuit, creamy off-white, muted blue-greens - paint your white chairs and a hand me down bench wythe blue and find a graphic sunbrella print with a little blue green, chocolate and orange for cushions and pad skirts with velcro at the table . . make a galvinized pipe leg / plank 1 x 12 / clear finish console for behind the door . . now you are cooking with gas . .

Thanks for the replies! My wife suggested we talk to a local real estate agent, so i think that is a good idea... just that Im not sure how helpful they are likely to be if we arent selling yet :) As for saving for our dream house, I dont disagree, however if doing this up nicely over the next ~5 years or so while we live here nets us some extra in the eventual sale, then that of course will help us as well. Interesting thing happened today actually. I got a knock on the door and one of the older neighbours asked if he could take some lemons from the tree. I of course said yes. Anyway he was telling me he had lived in the street for 40 years. I asked him if the house had always looked like this, and he said no that ~30 years ago the old old owner did a massive renovation and pulled off the timber and put up the bricks and gutted the inside of the house. Interesting stuff!

Laughter is the best medicine. A person who laughs suffers from less anxiety and feels better all-round. Although scientists still don’t know exactly why we laugh, there’s lots of evidence that it has a beneficial effect. To take just one example: children who laugh a lot develop faster and better than their peers. We move 18 different muscles when we laugh. And while we’re laughing, our diaphragm massages our abdominal organs and supplies fresh oxygen to the brain. Applying this principle to interior design, we can say that décor that makes us smile also keeps us healthy. Here are a few amusing ideas that will bring more humour and individuality to your home. For men with a sense of fun Did you know that men with a sense of humour are more attractive to women? Studies by psychologists have found that women looking for a potential partner prefer men with a sense of humour because it is an indication of an active and healthy brain. Strangely enough, the opposite is not true: men don’t prefer witty women as partners. For a man, it seems to be more important that a woman can laugh at his jokes. In light of this, men (and especially those still looking for an ideal partner) would be well advised to furnish their homes with a few humorous extras. Why not opt for a white shark that leaps out of the living room wall, or a fitted sheet that turns the bed into a building site? Funny sayings as wall tattoos can also make women laugh. Why not give it a try! It’s important, of course, that you also think the decorations are funny. In fact, this is one of the few rules governing humorous home furnishings: it needs to be something you can laugh about as well. The unexpected What makes us laugh? On most occasions it’s something unusual or even impossible that tickles our funny bone. Most jokes are constructed to do exactly this, making a punchline out of something we didn’t anticipate. There might also be a touch of „schadenfreude“. Similarly, humorous interior accessories also aim to be something out of the ordinary: the lasso, for example, that appears to defy gravity by holding a wine bottle, or the table that only has two legs. The soap dispenser in the form of a giant nose is also something completely unexpected, just like the emergency release panel that contains an emergency bar of chocolate instead of a lever. Childhood memories These things don’t always need to elicit gales of laughter: just a smile is often enough to keep us feeling more cheerful. The trigger could be objects that remind us of pleasant things from our past – such as the light that resembles the Tetris game we used to play as teenagers, or the smiley floor lamp, or the giant yo-yo from the ’80s. Simply funny! Laughter researchers claim that we model our sense of humour on that of our parents. Depending on how its parents react, even a six-month old baby knows what’s funny and what is not. And this is probably also the reason why the Japanese, for example, laugh about different things than Europeans. Within a certain cultural group, however, most people tend to find the same type of things funny. When furnishing your house or flat with amusing accessories, then, you can’t really go far wrong. So let’s start bringing a little humour into our homes! Source: Humorous Home Décor | HARO Flooring New Zealand