Lily- Congrats! It's a beautiful house and land...and I'm so happy for you. Is that you sitting on the chair with the view? As for the yard, the good thing about patchy grass is that it will be easier to remove and replace with gardens! LOL Is the top soil very good? Sometimes a builder will just spread dirt over the area, without topsoil...and nothing wants to grow. That (hopefully) free manure could really come in handy. Definitely take your time planning! Do you still have the dogs? Where do you plan to have their area? Everywhere or only out back? That makes a difference on your design, too. I love the idea of a pergola...and a pond! Depending on the light and wind patterns, I would probably put the roses in the front and add some perennials and shrubs to give it a bit of a cottage feel...but a little more formal. That's where the grass paths can really help and give you a place to walk through the gardens and have a few benches to sit down and enjoy the fragrances! I would also put climbing roses on the pergola...you'll have a mild enough winter (normally) that they should do very well! I'm so excited for you! You have to give us updates and a lot more pictures :)

This is late, but I wanted to say I had a similar experience a few weeks after we moved into our new home. In our case, a brown water spot showed up on the dining room ceiling, right under the master bath. Naturally assumed it to be leaking pipes in the bathroom, but surprise surprise, it turned out to be a leaking plumbing vent pipe's boot on the roof of the house, over the master bath. (Of course that was not known or realized until the dining room ceiling was opened up by the plumber in four places seeking a leaking pipe!) The rain water found a path through the roof, down the exterior wall, bypassing the master bath ceiling, and then it hooked to the left and emptied into the dining room ceiling. Those details aren't my point here - I'm just saying these water leak sources can be tricky to locate. And yes, the people who sold the house to us were well aware of the problem and had shoved foam rubber into the vent pipe's boot from the attic in a feeble and irresponsible attempt to remedy the problem. $150 for a roofer to fix that boot would have prevented costlier damage that we paid for. $500 insurance deductible meant we paid the entire $480 repairs out of pocket ($150 to fix the boot and the balance to fix the dining room ceiling that never should have had to been torn up!!). And yes, we too had paid an inspector good money to look things over prior to purchase but he didn't see this at all. By the way, that was just the beginning of my roof vent pipe boot failures - a second one failed soon after, filling a bathroom light fixture with water - just like on the 3 Stooges episodes!! We ended up replacing all of the boots even though the house was just 7 years old. I hope you didn't get too discouraged - I find that home ownership is a roller coaster ride of good times and costly repair times! Overall though, you'll probably make money off of the investment in your home in the long run. Godspeed to you.

ladynimue -- I, too, am an older parent! (I had my eldest at 34 so I'm now 38.) I don't know where you are (and I'm not prying -- please don't read it that way) but 'round here, "older" is normal. The other mothers with whom I spend the most time all started in their mid-late thirties / early forties. One of my friends is going through perimenopause and she lets us have a good laugh about having within the past few years finished nursing and now hot flashes! Another just turned 45 and is pregnant. I do not think you'll be odd woman out here, ladynimue. Based on my experiences both in living here plus when we were househunting and the parents we met then, you should fit right in! I also wanted to tell you how phenomenal we are finding the medical community(-ies) to be here. Our "home" hospital in CA was Stanford -- a v. (internationally) well-regarded hospital. Well, they certainly failed my younger (now 20 months) son. He was ill from birth on, and his pediatric team kept brushing us off, blaming my concerns on my PPD. ("You worry too much." "You need to calm down.") We moved out here (to CO) and within a fortnight had his well-baby visit. I started my spiel about his issues when the ped. immediately stopped me, saying "something's clearly not right here." Finally!!! After we got to the root of it, I became crazy-angry, both with the Stanford pediatricians but mostly with myself. (Mother's guilt -- I should've somehow divined what was wrong with him or somehow persevered with others, which I realize now. But at the time, with a two year-old, PPD, an ill newborn and selling our house I felt lucky to feed my older and nurse my younger without crying hysterically.) My younger son is part of the Child Find program (it's federally mandated, locally funded); it helps children with issues (whatever they are) get better. He has physical, occupational and speech therapists who all come to our house every single week. I'd say within two months of that well-baby visit he was enrolled in the Child Find program and progress was underway! (He's now doing great -- not yet caught up, but moving apace and, more importantly, he's healthy!!!) I mention this because good friends of ours back in SF whose son is on the autistic spectrum are on a two year waitlist to see a speech therapist (through the same program, different name there). If we'd had to wait two years goodness only knows where we'd be! (Clearly we'd just do it privately but you get my point.) Also, about three weeks after we moved out here I came down with Shingles (although we didn't know what it was at first), centered in my inner ear. It paralyzed my face and that's what got me to the MD tout de suite. I didn't know an MD, just called the local hospital, explained my symptoms and they responded with "how quickly can you get here?" Within thirty minutes I was seen and within ninety minutes I was having a CAT scan (to rule out stroke or tumor, although they did discover I have Grave's Disease, another thing about which I'd been complaining to my Stanford MDs only to be told "yeah, everybody's tired all the time -- it's called 'motherhood.'"). Later that day they determined it must be Shingles (although I didn't yet have any blisters). Because of it paralyzing my face my eyes were in trouble (Shingles can cause severe and permanent damage to the eyes): the MD's office called the MD's personal opthamologist (I mean the one she goes to see) and had them see me that day as well. I'll tell you, I have never felt so cosseted! (and my MDs office also made an appointment for me with my MDÂs endocrinologist  again, I didnÂt have to worry about "who should I see?") Whenever I recount this story to any locals (meaning folks who live here in CO), to a one they say "I know, I get superlative care here, far exceeding whatever I received where I lived before." My son's progress and the immediate and thorough care I received are merely two examples. I just wanted to tell you another thing we love about CO. If solely for my son's sake I am forever grateful we moved out here. But the truth is, we love all of it! -Brooke

@Tim Cleary Thank you for letting me know that replacing the plywood veneer is not a burdensome ordeal. I'll also bring up your helpful suggestion of removing the toekick and using a small camera to see if there's any water damage under the cabinets. @Susan Murin Yes, completely agree that we won't pay the GC until this is completely resolved. That's partially the urgency (other than water leaks should be addressed immediately, IMHO) is that his payment is due upon completion and we are almost complete. But obviously, we won't consider the project done until this water issue is resolved. :) @chispa Confirming that the cabinets were delivered undamaged and installed pristine (I had to dig through old photos to make sure). The plumber installed the pipes. Someone noticed the water before me and fixed it but did not bring it to my attention. I noticed it a several weeks ago and that's when they told me it was a small leak that occurred during installation and that it's been resolved. The mold remediation specialist went into our basement but was unable to get a moisture/mold reading because there is some plywood in the way. He said my GC would need to remove it to inspect under the kitchen floorboards. @bry911 Thank you for the helpful suggestion and for reaffirming that this requires further investigation. :) @dianeski Thank you for your kind words and walking me through your detailed thoughts. It was helpful to organize my thoughts in how to approach this. I'm waiting to hear from the GC to get an exact timeline of when this water leak was detected and fixed but based on the last correspondence, however long ago the leak did occur, it was apparently fixed within a few hours. He says the water line under the sink was a little loose which dripped into the cabinets. The sink was installed sometime end of March/early April. I first detected the leak mid-April and brought it up to my GC. The attached photo of the white cabinet with a silver pipes is a SAMPLE photo my GC provided to show where the leak occurred. The photo without any drywall indicates approximately where the damaged cabinets are located relative to the sink plumbing. Unless something changed subsequent to this photo being taken (doubtful), there does not appear to be any piping directly in the walls behind the damaged cabinets. I only highlighted the "black box under sink" as reference since it is visible in my original picture. What's even more puzzling is that the sink plumbing is ~10" to the right of corner where all the black mold can be seen. My husband says it's possible that the water travelled to the corner of the cabinets IF the floor had a slight slope but that's pure speculation (we don't know if it slopes). I am stopping by the house shortly to take better photos and also meet with my GC. I'll update this post after. THANK YOU EVERYONE!!!!