My fiancé and I are currently in the process of buying a house and would like to do a couple of renovations once we move in. There are carpets in most of the house with wooden floors underneath. We would like to remove the carpets and fix up the wooden floors. Some areas have tiles which we would like to remove and replace with polished concrete floor. So any advice (or links to articles) on doing this would be great. My main concern is the main bedroom.

It is a rather interesting room. It used to be the lounge, with a porch and dining area. The porch has been closed and turned into a type of sun room/en suite bathroom. The dining area has been dry walled off and separated it into a spare bedroom. Ideas are as follows:
1.The room is very dark. There is a west facing window, but the outside has a BBQ area with a roof which blocks out a lot of sun. Although the porch is facing north it is not letting in enough light. We are considering breaking in some eastern windows. Thought smaller higher windows would look nice.
2.Between the bedroom and the porch area there is currently a low wall with windows in (can see it in the photos). We want to remove that and open up the room. From the porch to the outside is a similar setup which we will leave intact. As a future project we might put in sliding window or something so that when they are open it feels like you are almost in the garden.
3.The en suite… can’t really be called an ‘en-suite’ bathroom. More like a ‘put-it-here-cause-there-is-space’ bathroom. Anyway, we’ll make it work. (For this you have to look at the plans I attempted to draw up.) What we want to do is the following:
a.Leave the toilet where it is.
b.Remove the bidet (yes, I bought a house with a bidet…) and break out the wall where it used to stand, from almost behind the toilet to the wall where the basin is, so we have an entrance into the bedroom.
c.Remove the shower and put a nice large shower behind the wall where the washbasin is at the moment.
d.Either move the washbasin a bit down the wall, or move it into the corner, I’m thinking more likely move it down a bit and put a cupboard in the corner. It’s a bit tight to leave the basin where it is and have an entrance between the basin and the toilet.
e.We want to leave the basin/shower wall with an entrance on the garden window side. So basically the wall serves as just a separation between the shower and the basin. As I’m writing this I’m considering breaking out that entire wall and have the shower as a feature flat bang in the middle without the wall… But will first have to think about that (and discuss it with the lady of course.)
4.The porch/en suite has some terrible tiles, so this will be replaced by polished concrete.
Hope I’ve covered everything (in an understandable manner). If you have any thoughts, ideas, advice or suggestions that would be great. Thanks!