Building a personalized house - Part 1

Amongst the things that I love at the farm is the bounty of nature's beauty.  I also love a lot of light - I think it is a shame when during the day, you would have to turn on the light indoors.  At the same time, since it is at the farm, the house needs to be built functionally, allowing me to carry out my farm activities with ease without having to worry about spending a lot of time organizing and cleaning the house.  I want to be able to spend the majority of my time on farm activities and not housekeeping chores. 
To start with, I made the decision to use tiles for the floor and for the walls as this will make it easy for me to clean.  Here I exercise my uncommon style - I use many different types of tiles and colors to delineate the different areas.  I also use the tiles to create a frame for my treasured pieces such as in my surau.  The tiles are used to frame the two beautiful, Belgian wall hangings that are of great meaning to me - the Al-Fatihah and Ayat Kursi.

I also like lots of fresh air and prefer natural cooling to air-conditioners.  As such, the external walls are topped with lattice to allow for air to circulate with fresh air coming in constantly from the outside, even with all the doors closed. 
In my bedroom, to allow for lots of natural light, I have a door leading to the outdoors, that when completed will have 14 glass panes and two panes will be a swinging "cat's door" to enable my cats to go in and out at will.  The door size is also larger than the standard size at 42in. by 72 in.
On the roof, are skylights and there is a lot of glass tiles on the exterior wall, to further allow light in.  As a result, I do not have to turn on the lights from around 0630 until 1900, contributing to less electricity consumption and being earth-friendly.  I opt to use glass tiles because I didn't want to be bothered with having to install curtains - this way, light comes in but you cannot see inside, only able to see fuzzy shapes.  My bedroom is divided into 4 areas, the solat area, sleeping area, storage area and bathroom.  It has an open concept and I use entryways to define the areas.

I like to have little designs added in to reflect the purpose of the area so the entryway to the solat area has a nice cupola shape and as it has 2 walls to the exteriors, there are clear glass tiles positioned to add more light to the area.  Separating between the sleeping area and the solat area, I love the blue glass tiles, to add a contrast that is cool to the eye.  I also found an interesting wall finisher that is made up of tiny stones that is applied to the wall in the same manner as plaster.  This enabled us to have a nice finish to all those curvy lines in the entryway as well as adding an interesting feature to the entryway.  In keeping with the allowing fresh air to circulate all the time, the top of the wall is finished with lattice-work.

I love having people over and I have an event, insyAllah, that I hold every year, the Durian Fest.  With the aroma of durian and many guests, I needed to have an area that is large enough to house this event.  This is the third area that was built on the farm following the leggo style of building.  The living room is a 24x24 tiled open space from which the areas are attached to and with two double-doors, one the main entrance and the other to what I hope will be a picture-garden when I am done :).  When all the exterior doors are opened, I love the airy feeling.  I have yet to decide if what type of furniture I will place in this room but for the moment, it just houses the tv stand and my bookcases.  

I like leaving this area uncluttered as it connects to the surau so whenever I have solat jemaah, there is a lot of room.  To reduce distractions but yet give a bright and fresh feeling to the surau, the walls are also topped with the lattice-work and although there are no windows, there are clear glass tiles positioned as well as skylights for maximum lighting without making it too warm in the afternoon. 
I have still got quite a lot of work ahead but I am having fun in this adventure.  I can't wait to have it completed because it is a distraction from my main activity, farming.