Thanks for the information, Casey. Kirkhall, You bring up a valid concern, but I'm not going that direction. The house plan we've chosen has everything we need -- probably for the rest of our lives. Our ONLY reason for "prepping" the bonus space is that IF at some point our circumstances change, we want the space to be available. For example, if at some point one of our children moved back in with us, we might want to use that space. Or, if at some point in the future, our children inherit this house and think it would be perfect if only it had one more room, we'd want it to be ready to make into a real room. Mind you, I'm not saying you're wrong about codes -- only that I think the possibility of us using this space is fairly remote, and I'm willing to chance it. Ren8, I agree that this term is used -- perhaps purposefully? -- to confuse buyers. It sounds like, "Hey, here's a free room for you! A BONUS!" And it's easy to say, "Oh, look, we can afford to build an 1800 sf house! And it'll be comfortable for our family, especially with that big upstairs room!" And then once they realize the upstairs room is 500 sf OVER what they thought they could build, they've already bought the plans. Yeah, it's misleading.

The room beside the fireplace room looks sooooo good! Hard to believe it is the same house! OK, about the lamps. You need rectangular shades either for those lamps or we need to try a different approach. You can try that white lamp you have with the rectangular shade on one end and then try putting a floor lamp on the end where there is the corner. I see you “grouped” some photos on a small table by the white chair. And put a throw over the white chair. How does that look from the back view? Are you gaining some confidence now and seeing with some changes you can vastly improve your home and not spend a dime! Don’t you love that?

I think I would make a design that has walls on the office as well. An office is not something that I consider a space that is pretty to look at and can get messy so having it in view of the public areas would bother me. The other part is what if you're on the phone do you want the noise from all the other areas to be transferring to your phone call? Say someone running the garbage disposal in the kitchen or TV noises from the living room, or just conversations, screaming children, barking dogs, etc. Not sure of your house make up, but there are plenty of sources of noise in a house. I work from home twice a week and having a place to go and close the door is very useful when others are around and especially when in meetings where I can have my phone on speaker and also work at the same time. This way I'm not disturbing others either and others can't hear what is being said either unless they stand outside the door and listen in of course.

Hi TIffany, first let me say how sorry I am you had to go through the fire and then get Covid, not to mention the gypsy-life. I'm glad you came through it with so much drive and enthusiasm. A lot of people would have just given up. So, you will have a dining room in that room. One of the things you could do to bring in more light is to have some lovely built-ins constructed (don't know your style) facing the window with mirrored doors and maybe a mix of clear glass as well to house your dishes, trays and ornaments. I assume you will have a chandelier (light!) and possibly some down lighting or spot lighting. I saw an interesting dining room, though I doubt this is your style, but they painted the ceiling a metallic gold. It was fairly muted but it reflected whatever light was in the room in a subtle way. I saw another application where the designer created a coffered ceiling but instead of paint the little squares were mirrored. It was lovely because in daylight it picked up the green of the outdoors and cast it about the room. You could also hang pictures with picture lighting on top, paint the room a fairly deep rich color and have the pictures pop that way. You might be able to do all of the above if you're careful. Also, could you modify the window and have a glass canopy at a 90 degree angle extend out above it so that even more light will enter. Alternatively you could put in a small bay window there which might bring in more light. Not sure what you're going for in terms of style.