If it's still in the pot, it's probably root bound, Also probably needs a nice shot of balanced fertilizer. Looks fairly good to me. elaine

If you have scale you have ants. Ants farm the scale. They bring it to the plant and eat the secretions. Systemic poison like orthene helps. Work on getting rid of the ants.

Mommy2twocuties, we determined our main floor square footage by first deciding which rooms we had to have on that floor. As far as room sizes, one thing I did to visualize was to measure the sizes of rooms we had in our existing house and use that as a jumping off point. For example we had a dining room at the existing home that was 11x11. I knew from living in that space that it was much too tight for the table and china cabinet that we had and the buffet that I want someday. Based on that, I knew that 14x16 was the minimum size that I wanted. We also used the same formula for determining approximate sizes for the family room, bedrooms, walk in closets and kitchen. Because our existing rooms already had the furniture and stuff that would be moving with us, it made the numbers feel real to us and give some additional perspective. Once you know what you want/need for rooms on a floor, and the approximate size of each, you can better ball park the square footage that you are looking at. It will still bloat up with hallways, stairwells and closets, but you will know if you need to be looking at 1500, 2100, or 2800 square feet to accommodate your wants.

You are brave, I could never let someone tile anything, unless I was able to check the layout daily! I hate the look of 1/3 offset, so I prefer to go with stacked when there is no other choice. I find the repeating stair-step pattern busy and prefer the straight simpler lines of the stacked pattern. You need someone to do a scale drawing of the layout to get a feel for how the patterns will work. Next best thing is if the tile installer will prop some tiles up in the different patterns and take some photos for you. Match the grout to each tile color. Good luck!