@midesign0401, Hi Megan, yes it is heaven, I take a look at it all and sigh in happiness!!! As for the house, there's a bit of money to go ahead but this is now our busy time of the year, as we are hay contractors spending many many hours in tractors. However, I intend to get onto the next job ASAP which is laying the sill tiles around the veranda. It's a bit of an old fashioned look but these tiles will protect our limestone bricks from water stain when it's raining constantly in winter. The water will run off the sill tile and drop just a little shy of the bricks. Limestone is not only rough in our case but very porous and we also plan to have these tiles on all the window sills too, like the old tan brick houses from the 50's and the chocolate brown sill they had on their windows,only ours are cream not chocolate. It will be easy to wipe the sills from time to time and keep the house neat and clean. Once these tiles ar in place, 80mtrs of tiles, then we can concrete the veranda and then the roof iron can go on hopefully before Christmas. We have all the bricks for the home but need to find another $16,000 for all the rest of the windows. We are only using our own income, not borrowing at all so we have to do a budget and see if we can allow the money for the windows as the income we earn from Sept to Dec, is about 90% of our income for the entire year. It's taken 7 years now to get to this point having spent more that $80,000 already as I'm keeping a diary of spending. Goodness knows how much a 30+ square home with pool would cost if we had to pay a builder!!! We are owner builders and we've done everything ourselves including digging all the foundation and laying over 5000 standard bricks and digging the hole for the pool and fitting the pool including all the plumbing. We put in all the concrete stumps, layed the floor and fitted all the underfloor plumbing with a plumber friend guiding us along. We also put up all the framing and roof trusses, so we are absolutely chuffed with our abilities and progress.

I love the option to work in a private office while still feeling connected to the larger open plan space. And who doesn't want a huge blackboard to creatively brainstorm?

If you're part of a couple, decorating can be about building a home environment you are both pleased with. Fortunately this is often easy as attraction is imbued with shared loves and admiration - you like the same things or you admire and adore the person and so what they like reminds you of your adoration, even if it isn't something you personally enjoy. But as you're both doing it, the decoration and features become about both of you. So for me, my own space is about those bits of me it would be unfair to impose on shared space - the obsessions, the fanboy stuff, the spreadeagled hobbies. In the house we might choose my photos that reflect our love of our current environment, while in my space the subject matter might be what I call my "boring photos" (the one's people want to ask "Why the hell did you take that?"). Likewise in my space I can spread the gear-obsession with photography over all available surfaces. And my books... I need bookcases for my eclectic tastes, leaving the more generic and shared-useful books in the shared spaces. But mostly, my space needs to have space for the person I share my life with. Yes, the area is filled with self-interest, but I need a space where my partner can come in, maybe with a laptop or a book or an iPad if they want to entertain themselves, and themselves relax, maybe two chairs & a coffee table, maybe a clear spot next to me on a long desk, maybe their own carved-out bit of space where they can just be, but all somewhere they want to be. Because, yes, I want to be alone, yes, as a reclusive, introverted person I sometimes need "clear air", but I would never want any space I occupy to have such low "WAF" (ugh, ~vomits~) that it would isolate me from the actual or potential presence of the one person sufficiently and deeply empathetic with me that they'd give me this "man space" within "our space". And I'd sure as hell do the same back.

couches, angled island, powerpoint on island are good bt having dining table so far away frm kitchen not practical...I can imagine a tiff everytime the table is to be laid...who is going to ferry all the food and cutlery up and down?