I love the grotto area! What are you doing with the picture frame?

The window frame? Right now just hoarding it. It has possibilities.

Very unique and creative!

Cute kitty! I have a couple of old frames and I am contemplating what to do with them. I like the light in picture 2 and the contrast of the pavers in the gravel. It looks like a cozy little nook.

Is this a monster deck, or is the entire house on stilts? I bet there is a grand view to the woodlands below, huh?

The entire 14 x 27 foot house is supported on the red cement columns. Bird's eye view from inside. Go have a look at the post From Down Below.

Chris:

I don't understand your reference to From Down Below, sorry.

Why is the retaining wall at the back of the house, rather that up the hill to the front, which would provide more usable space on the level below the residential area? Is the front entrance at one end, and a small porch at the far end? Where are the utilities? When locating a trailer, there are utility pipes and sleeves dropping down to the utility runs beneath. Are all your utilities above ground or portable?

Is this a unique house, or is this a common situation where you live? Perhaps you will learn more by seeing how similar homes have been developed and resolved.

Good luck

Further down in this forum is a post titled "From Down Below" with a picture showing more of the house on the red cement columns.

The lay of the land determined the positions of the walls. The basement patio is 15 x 35, half under the house and half open air. That is plenty space to set. I have 11 and 1/2 acres of useable land on top of a mountain. There is a front porch and a rear stoop. The utilities are all underground and enter the house on the uphill driveway side.

This is unique to this area. Normally you would see a house with a basement or substantial crawl space below. Pole houses like this are quite common on Maui, except there they use actual wood telephone kind poles By insulating the floor to R-38 I saved the expense of a closed basement construction on a sloping piece of land and got a fabulous open air basement patio to use.

An unintended bonus has been that the two walls and gravel patio have a SW exposure and have very much behaved as a passive solar/geothermal heat pump for the house above in the low angle sun of winter and stays nice and cool below in the high sun shade from the house in summer