Lazy Boy is not high end! Any good design shop should be able to source a custom sofa for you for the same price as you were quoted at Lazy Boy. You should expect a sofa to last at least 20 years. You get what you pay for. I love my O'Henry House sofas. Have 2, 7 footers and plan to have them for a very long time. If the fabric becomes worn, I would have them reupholstered. I got a very high grade fabric that should last at least 10 years with normal wear and tear. The key to keeping your sofas in good shape is to vacuum every week and also rotate the cushions at least once a week. With down it is necessary. Everyone that sits on them, can't believe how comfortable they are. Some things are worth saving up for and I believe a good quality sofa is one of these. It is used every day and will receive the most wear and tear of all your furniture pieces.

The presentation from your architect is not well done. It suffers from stiff fussy computer fill patterns that obscure the nature of the house and distract your eye from the important issues. I never show a client a black & white computer elevation with all the materials shown. Cleaned up and noted they are useful to the builder. The roof of a house will not only appears shorter when viewed from the ground, it will appear to be a solid color with subtle texture rather than what is shown in these drawings. The roof is far less important in the elevation than the wall claddings. So tell your architect to delete the shingle pattern on the roof so you can see the wall cladding and to add some color even if the colors are not known; it doesn't matter. You need to clearly distinguish between the materials. And put a window of some kind in the blank gable pediments so they look tacked on. And make the corner boards and frieze board larger, and drop the high pants stone work down to the foundation where it can anchor the house to the ground instead of looking like the house is sinking into the foundation. Add a "water table" at the bottom of the siding to establish the floor line. This house has some classical elements so follow though with that theme and build a correct cornice return, omit returns at the stone element and offset the column capitals at the ends of the porch (the beam should align with the column below). The columns appear a bit spindly so try making them wider. They seem too short to be tapered. Reduce the number of window panes and use sub-sills under the windows instead of "picture frame" trim. The window in the stone wall should be recessed with brick molding trim and a masonry sill. Some kind of a lintel might help too. This is just a quick study of what an architect might use to show you the design of your house. If he/she prefers to draw with a computer and you are willing to pay for the extra time, a better program would be SketchUp. As for materials, I don't think a horizontal stone pattern is at all appropriate.

Here's blue with no shutters... I gotta say, I like it with shutters. Maybe a darker grey shutter with the grey and cream color scheme. **edit: I also saw you were considering SW Alabaster for the cream color. I juuuust painted my living room this color and it reads very white, not off-white. I would consider a creamier color. Also, I would make sure to paint swatches on the trim before committing cause, like Alabaster, they may read differently than on a paint chip or online. I would look at SW Dover White and SW Antique White. My last home had SW Antique White walls and this is an accurate representation of that color (the walls not the trim) vs. other images/paint chips online:

Apologies. It's particle/chip board. And yes that's uncommon, yet not unheard of. From research I see There's parts of the world that use particle board as a subfloor material. Australia has a latex self leveling product to use on particle board, but I can't find anything definitive here in America. I'm at a point now where I won't be ripping It up and starting new. With that, I suppose my best bet is sanding down edges, installing 1/4" plywood, filling any gaps/seems, and if the floor is still off kilter use the ol' water based self leveling compound.