Thank you for your response, the ceiling height in the basement would be to level out with rest of basement. No, I would not want to go lower. The sunken living room floor on inside has joist hangers already, this is on the main house middle beam. I do NOT have my floor open yet but here are pictures I found online that would be very similar to mine. the hangers on inside with wall dividing rooms right on the load bearing beam. The other picture would be the way on outside of wall with joist sitting on sill plate. My thought was that the living room floor that I need raised has no bearing on the rest of the structural walls. With in this living room I would be able to remove finish floor, sub floor to see all of floor joist.

Just a random (maybe obvious) point, a mountain house favors taller ceilings than a lake house. I am super energy conscious but I don't necessarily agree with the arguments about taller ceilings and energy use. Of course it uses more energy but that is also easy to compensate for. Large windows are a lot harder/more expensive of an energy hit - depending on orientation. It is possible to get wall based heat losses to near zero. Windows are always a lot worse. So having 8 foot tall wall of glass is worse than normal windows on a 12 ft ceiling for example. Presumably this build is in Canada which generally has very strict codes - and plenty of hydro already built....

Thanks, Silverlined. The picture I attached wasn't for the look we are going for - it was mainly to see the height of the ceiling. It's the same design built by another builder - so you can see the space itself although our finishes will be different. I agree with you about the stacked stone, which is why we were planning to go with tile instead. We will be having fairly modern features in the rest of the house which is why we were thinking of tile. If we were to go with a stacked stone look, I did like the look of a flat edged stacked limestone but I think we are going to go with tile instead. Did you have any thoughts on the width of the fireplace - do you think 4 ft would look too narrow? We happen to have an open concept house of similar width for our living room so I've tried taping it out on our fireplace but it's hard to picture fully since we do not have the tall ceiling.

I think everyone should build and focus on energy efficiency. That being said, aren't utility costs a very minor issue in 2021? My current house costs me about $500 in energy costs per year (not even that much) and my taxes are $13k per year. My insurance is $2k per year. Even an average new house probably should be more concerned with taxes than anything else. My planned retirement house is older and probably has $2k in utility costs per year but taxes are just $3k. (We rent this house out) As another point, my low utility bill house has 10 ft ceilings (and up to 14 in great room) while my planned retirement house has 8 ft ceilings. I suppose a 10 ft or 11 ft foyer would have an 8 foot door. That is the real cost so worrying about 1 foot of lumber (x20) does seem silly. Cleaning that extra foot is a non issue. Lightbulbs are LED and once you get past a few bad apples, the average retiree won't ever change a bulb. I also wouldn't expect paint for the average retiree. Now - cobwebs - hadn't considered that. An aging shoulder might not prefer those.