I think we are going to go w/ the hip style. I hate having to make these decisions, and quickly! Mainly b/c of budget, as I know it will be cheaper to do this. I honestly like them all the different ways, and agree the "eyebrow" top looks really elegant. However, the eyebrow type windows I do know are a problem w/ hanging blinds etc. so that was a bit of a factor in my decision too.

I agree with all of Mary's comments. IMO part of your difficulty is caused by treating the center upper floor element as a big dog-house dormer instead of a full room-sized cross-gable. There are several ways to design this cross gable but the simplest is to extend the rakes of the current design to the top of the porch roof. Do it yourself and give it to your architect to tune up. I would post it but I'm on an iPad. It would be cheaper than two fake dormers. As for the contractor's attitude about the brick "skirt", there are cheaper and better looking ways to protect the bottom of your siding if it is required to be close to grade and you are in a humid climate.

I absolutely love being able to stick to a budget, but you really don't have a cost issue, you have a budget issue. Making the changes necessary to get any meaningful reduction in cost is going to drastically reduce some of the features that make building appealing to be begin with. My advice is to either not build or pony up the extra money. If you can't increase your budget then I wouldn't build. To echo what Charles Ross said, $ per square foot is a very inadequate measure. It can be used effectively to communicate finish levels in similar homes but can do little else. Homes are a mix of fixed costs, variable costs and premiums. Fixed costs are the things that every house has to have regardless of finish level, variable costs are the actual raw cost of square footage, and premiums are costs associated with finish level (granite instead of formica, etc.) Even the actual raw cost of square footage isn't really variable. Adding one more foot to an 11 foot room may cost almost nothing. While adding a foot to a 12 foot room may cost a fortune (carpet comes in 12' widths). Also note that all under roof square footage has a cost, whether it is heated or not. When you have a house with a very high finish level cutting square footage can make sense. In a home that comes in at $400/ft² cutting out 500 ft² may save you $100,000. But when you are starting with a budget build then cutting out square footage can sacrifice too much. At $125/ft² the square footage that can be sacrificed is probably around $50/ft². To make meaningful cuts you are going to have to lose like 800 square feet of heated space. At that point why bother building? Just my 2¢

Man those bids just seem unreal to me. I know prices have gone up a ton but that just seems very high for the work involved. Unless your wanting a high level of finish or extra design details that haven't been disclosed for those area. I'd just delay moving in by a week and hire someone else to do that after you close but before you move in. While that would probably take me five full work days to complete (I'm super slow) a construction worker could probably slam that out in half the time I could. No way would I spend a combined $5600 for the time commitment that would take. I'd imagine the ship lap is more time intensive to install but still.