Thanks guys! It has been a terrible vacation, but still nice to see my father. I was really sick and am just now feeling better. The plumbers that were out there all day Friday seemed incompetent and I think they weren’t plumbers but were technicians who only know how to unclog drains. Chispa- Thanks! I think a home is a better choice for extended periods of time. We considered La Quinta Resort, but everytime we go to eat there, there are so many people and children. We just wanted peace. And it’s nice to have a kitchen and w/d, plus a pool. The house is like it’s own little compound. It’s walled off by high shrubs and completely private. .

I'll second Dawg's suggestion to ask for contractor recommendations from friends, family members, and co-workers. You could find useful reviews of tradespeople online until about the mid 2000s, when the web was still young, but they've long since gotten wise to the game. Now you can't trust any review source I know of. Every entry is gamed by the tradespeople, their friends and families, and their competitors. Meanwhile, the websites hosting reviews will gladly downplay or remove negative reviews for tradespeople who buy their advertising. I've had about as much luck blind-calling tradespeople who advertise in the local tabloid newspaper as I ever had with ones listed on Angie's List. As you're also discovering, contractors mostly don't give a hoot for "small" projects. (Why do I put "small" in quotation marks? Think about the people around you in this nation who are trying to live on a yearly salary of significantly less than $25,000.) If you're lucky, you'll find a couple who will drive over in their shiny new gigantic trucks, spend 20 minutes looking at your house and talking to you, tell you they'll mail or email you their bids, drive off, and never contact you again. The solution for folks who don't want to or can't DIY is handymen. They're disparaged here and elsewhere, no doubt with some justification, but if you're lucky enough to find a good, experienced, qualified one. hang on to him or her. Pro tip: the ones I've hired who did good work didn't drive shiny new trucks. Or you can do what millions of Americans do and learn to DIY. That's the natural reaction to contractors who are too focused on making the maximum amount of money this year to realize that people who get great work on their $10k projects just might hire them for $100k projects a few years down the line. Except that they already have as much work as they want building hideous McMansions, so never mind. Curiously, this refusal to look at small projects doesn't seem to be as much of a problem in Europe, at least according to my friends who live there. Maybe they're just lucky. Sorry for the rant. I'll take a few deep breaths now. :/ BTW,, speaking of Europe, you say you're using European materials, so why do you describe your tiles as 24x24 inches? They speak centimeters over there, not inches. Or are those actually tiles that are made specifically for the US market (supposedly) in Italy? Just curious, because house decor tends to be noticeably different over there, not that I'm enough of an expert to say exactly how.. At any rate, good luck with your projects.

Thanks, everyone, for all the wonderful advice. I have crossed the border from Nevada to California and was never stopped and asked questions about what I had in my truck. I had no idea they were that strict about bringing in plants. I also did read that during the summer months geraniums in PS need to be placed in an eastern exposure with only morning sun. But during winters in the desert they can be moved to areas with more sun during the day. I just wondered if other people had personal experience with them. I've been in Palm Springs in August when it was 120 degrees. I know what it's like personally. But at the time I wasn't paying attention to the plants. I was in Palm Springs this past March and saw properties with flowers like snapdragons and alyssum in the landscape. I asked about that and was told they are their "winter" flowers that don't survive the summers in that area. I thought that was kinda funny since I'me from the Midwest and have been used to the opposite my whole life. :-)

We are planning on buying in the Palm Springs area next year, I will be looking for an open plan. It will be a second home, smaller than our main home. Our current house is a partially open floor plan. LR and DR are open to one another, step down to LR. There is a 6 foot doorway between the DR and KIT, the kitchen is open to the FR, the FR is 5 steps down from the KIT. Overall I like the open feel, occasionally it can get a bit noisy when I am cooking and DH is enjoying TV, but I would buy the house again. Our previous home was a closed floor plan and it was fine too, but I had never lived in an open floor plan at that point. I think I prefer a partially open plan overall. In a larger home it would be nice to have the ability to close off rooms. The same concept as hotel ball rooms or schools use.