First of all I would get that fan palm out of there. They can get huge, but maybe your buyers won't think of that. Perhaps a dwarf japanese maple, they might tolerate your heat with little sun. You could try some hostas that aren't just plain green. Pansies should do well there in winter but you don't need them if doing impatients. For texture you could try Heuchera or Astilbe. Some rhododendron or heavenly bamboo (shades ones) might do well there. Check the other units that have similar condition see what they have done.

palimpsest, is the house you find odd the chalet-like "Swiss Miss" house (the one with the inverted V at the main entry)? I wasn't a fan either, but apparently it's a rather famous house -- there are about 10-15 of them in PS. The grass is the fake green stuff too -- it looked like Astroturf in person. rockybird, we'd buy something if we could find the right house. We definitely have our hands full with our current remodel, though, so we're not seriously looking to add more to our plates. Maybe in a couple years... Speaking of Neutra homes, a time capsule Neutra just sold in our area and we had the chance to tour it. It was the first Neutra house I'd been in. The house needs an overhaul, but check out this view out the kitchen window. I couldn't stop drooling... how is your pool coming, rockybird?

what did you decide? we are considering our options.

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.