On a single-family residence the main advantage of a shingled wall compared to a brick veneer cavity wall is its simplicity. A shingled wall is relatively easy to construct so that it is weather tight but a brick wall is not. A brick cavity wall is really two walls, an outer one that leaks like a sieve and acts as a water reservoir, and an inner hidden one that acts as a weather/air barrier, drainage plane, and ventilation space because the water has to get out at the bottom through weep holes that are often missing, buried, or blocked by mortar droppings and moisture driven out of the wet bricks into the cavity by the sun needs to get out of the cavity before passing through the highly vapor permeable weather/air barrier, sheathing, and insulation of the back-up wall where it might be stopped by an interior vapor barrier or high perm wall finish and cause serious problems that can be very expensive to fix. A shingled wall has a primary weather barrier of three overlapping layers of dense rot-protected wood over a secondary air/weather barrier that can be detailed to act as a drainage cavity in an excessively wet climate but since shingles do not act as a water reservoir this is not often necessary. So, for both of these residential wall claddings, if the materials are well selected, detailed and installed, they should last far longer than you will own your house and require incidental maintenance but in my opinion there is a far greater chance that the shingled wall will be built properly, the initial cost should be lower, and the cost of modifications (for any purpose) should also be lower. In my opinion, the quality of typical residential brickwork took a bad downward turn in the 60's and another one after the '73 Oil Embargo and again in the developer years of the 90's. It is certainly possible to find a contractor who will provide a good brick wall but from what I have seen just in this forum, homeowners not familiar with brick cavity wall detailing, or who don't hire someone to oversee the work, are too often relying on luck. Here is a link that might be useful: water management in brick walls

Here is rough sketch with approximate dimensions. I have tried to make as much sense as possible of dimensions in your diagram. I think dimensions on my diagram are within the ballpark for most part. Depending on their accuracy, your closet space will get crunched a bit. I also took the liberty to close off the direct door from the kitchen because I think it is not essential. The idea I was toying with was that if you are ready to place a glass wall between the lounge and the tub then you can watch TV while sitting in the tub. For this specific purpose the tub is located lengthwise. Also, I decided not to relocate your vanity because you show it under a window, and I assumed that it is the best vanity location you could find under light conditions. Ideally, I would prefer to combine the sink vanity and the make up vanity under the window. Notice that the opening between the retreat and the actual bath area is almost 5'. You do not need such a big door. I would suggest that you place the entry near to the tub and use that small stretch of wall between the doorway and the shower door for placing the dresser for your husband. Sorry, forgot to draw it and it's too late now to go back and add it. Also made the door to the deck open outwards -- not sure if this is what you want! I'm sure others will suggest even better changes to this. This is just a start and I enjoyed it!

FYI, a gable is just the wall under the pointy part of the roof. The decorative boards on your garage gable are, I think, battens, which are just pieces of wood that cover up the seams between the wood siding. They are primarily decorative, and if you don't like them, you could probably take them off. (On older Tudor homes, you might see a similar effect created with actual beams, and those would be structural and not just cosmetic). Because your house has the whole California/Mediterranean thing going on, I don't think that highlighting the battens is going to be in keeping with the style of the home, so I would favor painting them to blend in. You could remove them, but you might find that makes the garage gable too plain and boring. As others have suggested, you will have to choose a paint that works with the stone, unless you want to remove the stone. The stone definitely has some of that peachy thing going on, although it has some more muted grays that you could work with. Based on your pics and my images for Waynesboro Taupe (that is, take this with a grain of salt since computers don't always render color right), I don't really like the Waynesboro Taupe with the stone. Here are some colors I liked better: Chelsea Gray Gettysburg Gray Sandy Hook Gray Fairview Taupe Iced Marble (this one runs to blue-gray, which might be too much out on a limb for your neighborhood) I think that you could keep black as an accent color (I like black and taupe together) for the shutters and maybe the front door. I would like to see the garage door go dark, either matching the wall color or even going a few shades darker. The white draws too much attention to what really isn't a great feature of the house (I'm not a fan of prominent garage doors in general, let's not make them stand out more than they have to.) Benjamin Moore's color viewer has a sample picture called "Ageless Tudor" that has some characteristics in common with your home (stone, board and batten gable) that you might want to use for experimenting. Or I think you can upload your own photo, although I can't vouch for how well that works.

Although cedar looks nice, it can create a host of issues depending on the area. Lived in a cedar roof house where the cedar attracted flying squirrels, which can chew through anything and they did, landing themselves a home in our attic. Repaired their damage and replaced with asphalt shingle, and problem disappeared along with the cedar. I'd take woodpeckers over flying squirrels, but would rather have neither and accept a "cedar look". Everyone is assuming the builder is changing things on specifications, which could be the case, but could also be the case of the OP reading into the renderings too much. Spec homes are generally not "one off" homes and the plans may be used again, tweaked, etc., by the builder and builder's architect. So, renderings are "artist design" only and not always representative of exact finishes. Rarely does a builder pay for renderings to represent every possible finish on a house and if he/she did, would have to increase house price to reflect "eye candy drawings". The specs going in the house are determined more by what pencils out for that home site, location, build costs, demand, etc. Maybe 9/10 people looking at possibly buying this home want hardie and the builder knows that, hence cedar wasn't in the design specs to begin with or builder realized this and changed. Either way, when looking to purchase a spec home, go by the specifications, spec sheet, start pack, whatever the builder calls it, to determine what is going in the home (not a rendering). BTW, this also goes for the landscape in a rendering. Don't assume that 100 year old hardwoods will be brought in for your project just because they are shown in a rendering (it would be funny if wasn't so close to true).