Existing kitchen layout

We've visited the house at a few different times of the day and it's great to see that in the afternoon the sunlight pours in on the upper floors. (Our current flat gets sun pretty much all day, and the light is often so bright we need to wear sunglasses inside.) As we're turning this kitchen into a spare bedroom slash office with a 'family room' on the sunny side of the wall I'm keen to harness the light right through if possible. Ideally we can make part of the wall transparent, or maybe the door will be positioned to let enough light in.

What you're looking at here is where a desk will end up. The dishwasher you can see will be hocked on eBay maybe, and our new one will be integrated into the downstairs kitchen. You can see where the services (gas, electrics, pipes etc) run down the wall on the right-hand side. This protrusion has to stay, but we should be able to incorporate it into the layout to be a subtle feature, the end of an inbuilt bookcase or something.

The window sill has been made out of the same laminate used on the bench tops, gee, how practical. Cutting onions on a window sill has always been a goal of mine. [Note - I am kidding]. I don't mind some of the design features in this property - the tiling for instance is better than the effort in our current abode. But if you're going for this kind of streamlined 'modern' aesthetic, wouldn't you try to make the skirting boards and the finish fit the bill too?

Anyway. I've been watching hours of Grand Designs and reading back issues of Living Etc. When you're hungry for inspiration a month between publish dates seems like an eternity! Grand Designs has been particularly useful at putting things into perspective because we're not building from scratch. Though depending how this remodelling goes it'll either make us desperate to do a project from the ground up, or shelve the idea forever...

Have found a great site called The Lazy Organizer which is going to be very useful in the forthcoming months!