You have done a beautiful job of tucking plants into the crevices of your retaining walls. Your house trim color is perfect -- just slightly lighter in hue than the retaining wall blocks. First I would paint the big, flat gray wall slightly lighter than the blocks and slightly darker than the house trim. The concrete walk and stairs I would stain a mottled blend of the blocks and the house trim colors. Next would be to paint the railing black or the house body color. Now, think of the following as creating a light, airy trellise structure from the walk-level face of the (currently gray) wall to about 7' above the top of the wall (using 6x6" posts attached to the wall) with a corresponding line of posts sunk into the terrace level 2' in from the outside edge of the wall-attached posts. The inside posts would be about 6-8" higher than the outside posts. Put 4x4" wood to attach the outside line of posts to each other and do the same with the inside line of posts. Run wood pieces at the top of the two lines of posts from the inside line to the outside line at about a 45 degree angle. They would be cantilevered up at the terrace level. Across the top of the angled pieces create your top trellise boards which run parallel to the two lines of posts. OK. There you have your basic structure. You might want to extend the structure around to follow the street side of the terrace. You could then follow the suggestion of reom10 above about creating a bench-planter on the terrace side. Your spacing of the boards parallel to the gray wall and attached to the outside posts would determine how private you wanted your terrace to be. You might want to soften the terrace "floor" by using something irregular like flagstone with groundcover plantings between the stones. From the latticework on top of your structure you could hang seasonal flower baskets. Plant vines to go up the trellis and spill down the wall. How about planting a row of tall, narrow shrubs along the neighbor's fence above your terrace to help add to your privacy and make your yard feel less 'structured'? Or, how about patio table/s with umbrellas to block your neighbor's view? Anyway, you have a fun project ahead of you.

An all weather outdoor shower is easily done by locating the mixing valve inside the house and use a coupling shaft to locate the handle on the outside. You must use a standard tub type lower faucet (with the pull up to activate the shower) to allow the system to drain out when the shower is done. You also have to make sure everything slopes in direction of the water flow. We live in Bancroft Ontario so winters are well below freezing and we have been showering outside for 3 winters. Only issue we have is the shower head will freeze so we typically remove it after a shower or shower without it on when really cold. The system has worked well and it helps that nothing special needs to be done by anyone. no inside valves to close etc. Just turn off tap and everything drains.

Hi Nic, I've been stuck with shower-over-baths in a few rentals and they can be slippery death traps! They also get grotty in summer with bare feet, post beach showers etc which limits usage as a bath anyway. If your kids are old enough I'd go for just a nice big shower area or a separate shower with a compact freestanding bath if you can fit one. If your kids are little or the above won't work for you here's some tips to make a shower over bath safer and easy to use: - Pick a bath with an absolutely flat bottom and anti slip texture at the shower end (those suction anti-slip mats are worse than useless). - Position the shower screen so that you can step straight onto the anti slip part. - Make sure the bath edge is low enough for the kids to enter end exit easily. - A hand held shower head that can move up and down would be a nice addition. Hope that helps! Good luck with the new bathroom :)

Just wanted to post the most recent plan that incorporates all of the suggestions that I have received from the very helpful people on the Internet! Changes made: - added an extra bathroom on far left of the house near kids bedrooms - changed the toilet/main bathroom to move the shower over to the toilet room so that we could have 2 separate kids showering at a time (without coming into our room - although that remains and option) - moved the door to the library so that it doesn't look into the toilets/bathroom - optimised the space in our bedroom by moving walk in closet and bathroom around. This modification even allowed us room for a tub in the bathroom a so thankful for that suggestion! Now we just have to find room in the budget lol Questions: - when you walk into a bathroom, do you prefer to walk into a shower (from the door) or into a toilet? What would you prefer visible from the door itself? Logically you are going to use a toilet 9 times out of 10 so you would think that should be there first, but there is something odd about walking past a door and just seeing a toilet there... Thoughts? - is there enough room in the 2 bathrooms we created by joining the toilet and main bathroom? Dimensions are 3m by 2m (roughly) and with a shower coming out about 1m and the vanity about 550mm, that leaves more or less 1.45m to walk around, surely sufficient? If there are any other suggestions or thoughts on what you would do if this was your home we would greatly appreciate the feedback. Thanks you all so much in advance!