What you don't want is moisture to seep into the wall and get close to wood inside. I would first establish where the grade should be (disregarding that part of the wall is brick). Mark it out with a chalk line. Extend the bituminous waterproofing (such as what has already been applied to the concrete) to that line, including the brick that will be buried. Backfill and establish a proper grade. I wouldn't worry that a small amount of waterproofing will be above grade in the end. It will be covered by plantings. The scheme of filling a trench with rubber mulch will not work because it, too, will hold moisture which will eventually work its way into the wall. It is waterproofing DIRECTLY ON THE WALL that you need. Forget all the landscape fabric, plastic, etc. This stuff will not do the job of waterproofing. Ultimately, it will be in the way -- probably fairly early on -- and will get torn up, at which point it will become a mess.

I don't have a copy of the basement floor plan. However, it did come with the house plan and it was so well done, that we made very few changes. The only rooms that do not have windows are the play room and the bathrooms--which is fine by me. The basement windows are large and to the south. We also have tall ceilings down there and it does not seem like a basement at all. The house is 3500 sq ft, so not as big as you may have thought--although certainly big enough. We finished 3000 sq ft in the basement. We don't really need the upstairs great room either, but surprisingly we do use it. I have my baby grand in there and it has NO television. I do love my home. I wanted a home that was elegant but not pretentious, like so many new homes in my area. It took us about a year to build and we had a terrific building experience with the best builder I could have hired. We did time and materials, which I know is frowned on here--but for us it worked out well.

Agree with above, however I'll throw out that when I built my last home I put my woodworking space completely separate from the rest of the home (exterior doors, no shared ductwork, and exterior garage door for entry along with interior door entry that was a sealed "exterior" door). Kept dust out of the rest of the home and could spray paint etc without issues. try to keep stairwells if possible from the middle of the space. If building a shop, consider dust collection in the floor before pouring the slab.

I did a walkout basement design for someone on the existing house. If you only want the walkout part like the sample bellow not much dirt removal from the property would-be needed but you would need a good amount of excavation done (which is not a big deal) and most of the cost would be in a footing modification especially if you have to meet frost depth requirements and that will add to the cost, because the basement area which is being excavated and remain open the footing would have to meet frost line requirement and drain at the bottom of the stair would have to be tied into a sump pump pit. If you looking to make it more than a walkout and have a patio, etc a good amount of dirt would have to be removed, you would need retaining walls, drainage system, grading, etc, and that can be very costly. Good luck