One of the tricky things there is, to figure out a design early, as you're not quite likely to rebuild the entire thing later. You can swap walls and blocks though. But the design likely stays.
It's hard to build impressive castles and the like early game, when you only have some basic materials...
The roof there is made of hay, yes. I like using it, because it can work nice with a sort of medieval-ish, or rural town feel? The curtains are made from pumpkin walls. They look like this naturally. Actually, the life-saver is there only because the angler gave me one, and I was like "where to place that...?" and since I had no better idea, I just put it there. XD
Also, yes, black cat. It's an adorable pet!
It's also because I had this playthrough while halloween was active. That also explains the amount of pumpkins, though I like using curtains normally too, and sometimes jack 'o lanterns too as garden deco. but normally, that's locked behind EoC, or any other (not king slime) boss, since you need the dryad to plant pumpkins. But they worth it, because can be used nice in builds. And what you don't use for curtains and other stuff, you can cook.
Also, paints are your friends. The bathroom there for example uses granite toilet and bathtub, and, I think, one of the dungeon sinks. And probably tin brick for tiles? And they're painted white.
By the way, halloween also allows access to rare vanity too - and if you have some in mind, you can just bring it from the other playthrough, since you can't easily get them on the current one yet, and vanity won't really affect the game, like, it's not like you gain anything from them, besides a cool (or cute) looks - ,
like Albus' barrett is a nurse cap dyed purple or something. It also allows other hair accessories to be visible, which was a brand new feature added just before I started his playthrough, so, this combo allows for both the barrett and a vanity obsidian rose to be visible.
You can play around much with vanity, and I quite like his looks. It was a very fun playthrough too, and so far the only one, where I managed to defeat expert moon lord, so I suppose Albus is quite strong. XD
Fun playthroughs can be inspiring to try to draw the characters too.
As for storages, it's particularly normal for first playthrough, but indeed many players play a way that they just hoard everything they find. That's a way to play too, but as I said somewhere before, "if you're Smaug, don't be surprised you need something of the size of entire Erebor, to store your hoard"
I think, it might comes from modded, where, when you have cheat sheets mod at your disposal, you can get any and every materials and stuff quickly, that certain stuff has no real value anymore, and you don't necessarily hoard as much stuff, because you don't need them - particularly building materials, etc. as you can build up your base/town at the start, and later just add some extra stuff, but you have no reason to keep several stacks of stone, dirt, etc. - this doesn't necessarily invalidates everything though. Something you found along your way might feels more valuable, and you just add it to the build later, like whatever decoration. like seashells from the beach, or some more books from the dungeon, or angler rewards, or anything.
And, the "no much value" actually kind of goes for other loot too. And you don't need modded for that, your previous playthrough, you probably saw, that there are many stuff you never actually used. It can be okay to keep one of those too, but when you have multiple instances of stuff you never actually use, there's no real reason to store all those in your storages. By the way, different chests can help keeping stuff more organised too (plus, they can be named too). And it's also helpful if you have materials very close to their crafting stations, so you don't have to move around with them, but just open the chests, and craft the things from materials stored in the chest - you don't even have to take them out! (except when alts may be used and you wanna make sure you won't use up the rarer material, if you want it for other things (e.g. iron/lead) - though in general, it will always use the one first that is first in the row (the more up and left than the other).
Even then, you might find that you're running out of space, and that's why you sometimes just place additional chests - and dressers also function as chests! - but you can also add chests (or dressers) elsewhere too, like in other houses, and store some stuff there. There's no real reason to keep weapons you never use, in your main storage for example.