Some people find plans on the internet or in plan books. Some folks find a builder they like and then just choose one of the builder's plans. Some people hire an architect to design a custom plan just for them. A few of us spend uncounted hours designing our own homes. It all depends on what you want, how much money you're willing to spend, and/or how much time/effort you're willing to spend educating yourself, and/or how much you want/need an expert to guide you through the entire process. As for prices to build, everyone asks that question and nobody ever gets what feels like a satisfactory answer. The truth is, there are just too many variables for any answer you get - other than a bid price based on building a specific floor plan on a specified lot - to be anything more than the grossest of ball-park guesstimates. Even narrowing down your request to "cost to build in NC" doesn't help. NC is a very big state with a highly varied geography and huge demographic and cost-of-living differences from one county to another. I can easily imagine that the price of building the exact same house could easily vary by 75% or more depending on whether you were talking about building it in the middle of the Research Triangle Park area, in the mountains around Asheville, along the Outer Banks somewhere, or down on an old tobacco farm in the Bladen Lakes region. And I'm not just talking about higher land values in some areas than others. Because cost-of-living is so different in some places than in others, labor prices will vary significantly. You would, for example, probably pay a whole lot more for a plumber to come out and lay your plumbing lines if you were building in Chapel Hill than you would if you were building in, say, Lumberton. Wish I could give you a better answer. I know it frustrated me no end that I couldn't get a reasonable idea of what it would cost to build until after I'd already committed a heck of a lot of money towards building. Unfortunately, that is just the way the process works. You can try an online building cost calculator like the one in the link below - but I found it to underestimate the cost of building my home buy more than 40%. However, if you're looking for a builder and happen to be planning to build in southeastern NC, I have an uncle that builds homes around that area and I can vouch for his integrity and for the beauty of his work. I'm in Texas so I couldn't get him to build my home for me but, when I go to visit, I'll often go round with him to see the houses he is working on. I've seen enough of his work to judge its quality for myself. And, I've met enough of his customers to know that they all consider him an honest, reliable businessman. Email me offline if you're interested in getting his name or more info. (Just click on the MY PAGE link after my name and that will take you to a page with a link that says "email me".) Here is a link that might be useful: Online building cost estimator

Putting beige and gray together in the same space used to be frowned on, but lately I've seen this done rather successfully, for instance where the rug was gray and the upholstery beige. With my light beige upholstery my new carpeting is going to be a warm gray color called London Fog which I would say is more or less greige. However, for a wall color I would probably choose something lighter, more like the solid color of your rug. It's already next to the "yellow" floor and I don't think it clashes. That color would lighten up your living room considerably and make the art on the wall pop more.

Current living room with furniture which will stay but need to add more glam to it. Floor plan of living n kitchen-dining. Kitchen and dinning which will open up. Dining furniture is not ours it was a staged one. So consider that space just used as is. Moreover the island is movable so we have for now put it under chandelier to prevent bumping into it

Dining area: Paint the wall with the arch the same white as the trim and wainscoting. This way you can paint the walls above the wainscoting any color you want. I wouldn't paint the wall behind the kitchen, as it nicely 'grounds' your kitchen in there. But you could add some color by painting the window wall behind breakfast area (and maybe the large lounge). Preferably add color with fabric and decoration. I think the current colors are kinda bland, but well chosen. (And two islands? Really?)