I recently decorated our beach condo on a budget. Items to consider are bowls or clear glass vases with found shells displayed. Sisal rug and woven baskets make a coastal feel. The baskets are great for storage as well. I used white light and linen drapes found at ikea.Because of small size of room, i have glass tables to help maximze space. I am adding shutters found at a flea market as headboard for guest bedroom this year. I found many useful items from community sales. I frequent local beach decor shops some pricey to get ideas for arranging and adding items. I would put couch so can look out window to garden. Put it floating in the center of the room, Tv on wall. Two chairs sort of where they are now in photo. Small table and chairs located near door and kitchen. Looks like not much space there but look at ikea furniture as it is for small spaces. One ikea table is shown to be against wall and then pulls out to enlarge, it might work for you.

Yes - there are these amazing options to have an 'electric pool cover' with a slat arrangement that allows you to virtually walk on it. Do a google search...'pool covers electric'... I've no idea on how much they cost... Here's some pics. Not sure if irregular shapes make this too challenging... Our pool experience... We are needing to change a few things with our pool already - wish we had paid more attention to the pipes and filtration... (Having to potentially move them as they are too shallow and in 'awkward spot'... Extra $ and I'm so worried it may cause issues for us... Even the location of the concrete slab for the pump... Wish we had thought about overall picture... If I was buying a car for $70k, I would have done more research, but somehow we got carried away with idea that we could have a pool for summer, and yet reality is that it's ready for the 'next summer'... Budget plan (original) was around $30-40k, but I guess it's like building a house... Plus it's all a big learning experience...

Congrats on the new home. Very exciting. As an experienced unpacker (we move every 2-3 years), the trick for organising is to stand in the space, consider how you will do things (ie imagine you’re cooking dinner, cleaning up, getting a drink etc) and, using sticky notes, decide where the easiest placement of kitchen utensils will be. You might, at this first stage, have six items that would be best in one cupboard. That’s normal. Choose the one(s) that you use most often, then with this in mind, redo the process. And be prepared to throw the whole system out after you’ve been in the house for a month or so Houses have a strange way of encouraging us to adapt to them no matter how intellectual/consistent/prepared we think we are

So where would your cooktop be? Where would you cut up vegetables and need to wash them? Where would people get a drink of water from? If you want to keep the kitchen bench top clear then that means you are going to be standing in the butlers pantry a lot accessing water for various cooking and personal needs of washing hands and drinking. Have you thought of putting a small sink at the end of your “clear island”, this will be somewhere to fill up and empty pots of water, if your cooktop is in the kitchen, somewhere to get a drink, somewhere to wash hands and vegetables.