We love our whole home, we built in '75 when prices were skyrocketing, so we had to be careful. Before we took the plunge, I did what's being done here, I asked as many people as I could what they loved about their home, or what would they'd change if they built again.
Mum & Dad were very conservative, & good advice was to keep the building/roofline/floorplan simple to save on cost & mantenance. So we went with rectangular. Keep the interior neutral coloured, & dress up with accessories was Mum's suggestion, & she mentioned that passageway carpets are the first to wear out first. As luck would have it, tiled entrances were the go, so we took the radical move of extended it down the passageway too. Virtually constant temperature year round.
High on the list of other pluses, was north facing windows, which we were able to accomodate & it's glorious in winter.
Someone else said if there's something that you'd like, but it's awkward with the budget, do it, it will cost much more to replace your compromise feature later.
A workmate lived in the hills, & he dreaded his raked ceilings, all the heat stayed overhead, & another gripe was that their brick feature wall was a dust collector.
We decided on a build, but made it smaller, & modernised the exterior to our liking.
What rounds it all off, is that we use every room, & anyone new to our home feels comfortable & relaxed.
The only thing we'd change, is fit a cavity door to the en-suite, they didn't exist back then, & it's only a very minor thing, so we haven't bothered.
