One possibility would be to swap the living room and the dining room. Since the current living room is larger than the current dining room you could still keep some comfortable seating (couch and upholstered chairs?) against the front wall for a keeping room/dining concept. Then your new dining areas (kitchen and dining room) and living areas (living and drawing room) would have good flow between them, which would work well both for family and entertaining. You could also add some builtin bookshelves in the drawing room or new living room to create a library area to add another fun element to the living areas. These bookshelves could be against the long walls in the drawing room, around the window with a window seat in the living room (former dining room), or built to create some separation in the open area between the drawing room and living room/stair area. Your plan seems to show some sort of builtin there, but I'm not sure what it is.

You have a great opportunity to go eclectic. So using very modern and colourful elements for the kitchen - modern storage cannisters, a vase, lights, toaster, even mixer, you start to introduce shocks of colour and shape that jar with the expectations in a traditional kitchen. In this image see how the chairs just add a touch of cheek to cheer up the kitchen...

Yes, JudyG that's exactly the way people were using the taller table. Sort of a café look, or casual bar setting. One home had a beautiful huge kitchen all done in white with dark wood floors and RH style fixtures and hardware. Where you would normally think would be a traditional dining room, they had made it up with a large high table and 6 barstools. It almost looked like an extension of the island. Another one was in a very open and light kitchen. It was smaller and where you might think of putting a breakfast nook they had a round café-style table with four barstools. I liked it because it gave a more casual appearance. If people were sitting at them, they were on the same level as those working in the kitchen. Almost like a bar at the island for that effect, but with some separation.

A bright color in one part of the room will make it unbalanced unless the pop of color is repeated elsewhere. Try tone on tone or taupe or a texture.