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.

I wouldn't put any water under there because of potential mould issues (in fact, there looks like there's a bit of mould already -- is there?). You could tile the bottom of it and put a strip of LED lights under the glass. What did you have in mind when you initially thought of the idea?

Susan, I find that people often make their coffee tables too low and too small. Measure the height of your sofa cushion and pick a coffee table that is a similar height. Also, in the layout you posted above the room would look better with a larger coffee table. Even as long as your sofa, or close to it. Let me know if you need one custom built, it easier to get the right thing for your room than you may think. Here is my etsy store if you end up needing one custom built. www.etsy.com/shop/MetalTreeFurniture

A 1500 sft house can be designed well with a lot of natural ventilation, skylights and a courtyard. The approx total cost would be around 30 lakhs.We are architects specializing in eco friendly designs. All our projects have skylights and natural ventilation. Kindly have a look at our profile and some attached images here and please connect with us to take this further.