What turned out to be "unexpectedly" good?

I know what you mean. I call it canned air.
It is air, only the other senses are not addressed. No sounds, no smells - especially after rain or in spring or the snow. It is simply just air.
It's still brilliant.

Hehe, that reminds me of the canned air "PerriAir" in a Mel Brooks movie (I believe, Space Balls). I don’t find controlled residential ventilation brilliant: anyone who has ever seen pipes and shafts of air conditioning systems from the inside (or has a rough idea why the profession of draft system cleaner exists) knows that even with the best filters particles accumulate in the systems over time, to which entire colonies of friends attach. I expect from the trend of controlled residential ventilation the long-term experience that allergy sufferers initially (and for several years) experience an improvement, but later a deterioration, and over the years increasingly ventilate "analog" again.

Actually nothing unexpected, since we made no compromises,

Descending from top to bottom by priority.

- Lots of window area on the ground floor (really above all)
- Photovoltaic system
- Raffstores
- 3m lift-and-slide door on the ground floor
- 3m fixed glazing next to the lift-and-slide door (another lift-and-slide door would have been pure waste of money with this floor plan)
- Tiles on the ground floor (completely)

These are all points we didn't want, needs are just that different.

particularly good? Hmm the WC and bathroom tiles. Both a great tile and super installed. The staircase is clearly nicer than I imagined. And the carpenter built us 1 cabinet wall and the cabinet under the staircase, both totally great and a "never without again." Although that is of course nonsense, of course it would also work without... However, the rimless WC is really great, I don’t want to go without it anymore, I gladly do without that dirt rim. And maybe one point that I really don’t want to do without anymore: the [Raffstores], reasons have already been mentioned. As an alternative to that, I would then only see [window shutters with slats].

And the carpenter built us a wall unit and the cupboard under the stairs, both also totally great and a "never again without". Although of course that is nonsense, of course it would also work without...

Could you roughly tell me the size of the cupboards and the costs? My wife wants something like that too. I'm not totally unskilled, but ideally I would actually prefer not to take on this task myself.

Unexpectedly good: our bathroom! Actually, it was an emergency solution. We knew where the bathroom had to go and what we wanted to have in it, so a solution had to be found. And the result is really "Wow"! We did not expect that. Especially the large double casement window above the toilet, which we then extended across the entire width there, is a real highlight! At first, it was just a necessity so that you wouldn’t hit your head on the toilet, which is under the sloping roof.
The result is altogether a large, bright, and (as we think) very beautiful bathroom. The sauna will be installed in October/November and then it will really be a great wellness oasis. Much nicer than we had imagined.
Then we gave up the bidet I originally wanted. Because otherwise the toilet would have been directly opposite the door. I thought that was silly. Now there is a built-in cabinet there, the toilet shifted more towards the bathtub and thus out of the "traffic area," and instead of a bidet we now have a hygiene shower. This way, we gained a great, large bathroom cabinet (now still without a door, but that will come) which I don’t want to do without anymore today. And the hygiene shower replaces the bidet well.
So overall, we really only created the bathroom as the external circumstances required – and the result is simply great.
Our kitchen with the solid, 10 cm thick natural stone countertop for the island – but here we expected it to be great and that’s exactly how it turned out. So not "unexpectedly" good.
Our guest bathroom turned out great as well. The shower is more comfortable than some showers in a typical single-family house, the lighting turns the rather dark room into a cozy, small oasis of well-being. We had not expected that either. Also, the tiles we chose for the entrance area and guest bathroom look really great. The main selection criterion here was that footprints should not show up so quickly, because they were laid in the entrance area.
I also no longer want to do without controlled residential ventilation. Just waking up in the morning in the bedroom and it doesn’t smell like a puma den is an incredible luxury that I never, ever want to give up again. We never achieved that in our old bedroom even with a tilted window – drafts only happened if the door was also open. Otherwise, especially in summer, it got stuffy. But with the door open, we had the cats in bed, which we don’t really like (because those beasts manage to steal more space than they’re willing to give). I actually like to sleep in a cool room and was skeptical whether I would like a bedroom with controlled residential ventilation and whether it would be overall too warm for me. No, it isn’t. The desire for coolness really stems from the feeling of not having FRESH air. Now with controlled residential ventilation, our bedroom is warmer than before, but surprisingly (and unexpectedly) that doesn’t bother me at all.
Our narrow window in the kitchen at countertop height. Until we managed to enforce that! We faced so much resistance that we ourselves became unsure. But now, after we prevailed, I have to say: brilliant! Looks great just as it is! And when you stand at the countertop, it’s bright, but even if the sun shines in directly, you’re not blinded. And it fits perfectly in terms of look into the kitchen.
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Side effect: the cones of light that the spots cast there look like a painting. We had not seen that at all on the countertop before (unfortunately I don’t have a photo of that right now, but the three spots cast cones that flow into each other, looks great).
Overall, we are very satisfied and happy in our house. We had, unintentionally, a lot of time to plan because the building application took so long – in hindsight, that paid off.

Could you roughly tell the size of the cabinets and the costs?

The living room is the full width of the wall, but the upper cabinets are only DVD/paperback depth. They weren’t available on the market or only for an outrageous price. The wall is about 5m. Costs are in the mid four-digit range.

We haven’t received an invoice yet for the cabinet under the stairs, but the price should be similar. The display cabinet can be fully opened; behind it, there is still plenty of storage space. On top, a small cover panel is still missing; we deliberately left the stair section open.