Thanks Konrad. We did quite a bit of hardscaping, and will be doing a little bit more with the patio cover, arbors and the fountain. But, it will be very pretty when it's done, and we'll have a peaceful place to take a nap and for company to spread out. The orchard you see in the background behind our property is a lovely older Valencia orange orchard that sadly has been abandoned. It has been in the family for 2 generations, possibly 3, and the cost of water in S. California has put them out of business. It just breaks my heart. The oranges are the sweetest Valencia oranges I've ever had, and they make the most delicious juice. Patty S.

In my experience, only items that would be costly to redo--if a serious sit-down about how you couldn't live with not getting what you CONTRACTED for, or at least agreed upon, didn't work, those could require a letter from your attorney, or even an actual lawsuit, because builders don't want to add significantly to their costs. For your type of stuff, though, they send their crews over briefly to touch up this and that, or replace something minor, without worrying about it. A normal part of the end-of-job wrap-up.

Sometimes, but it's not far and it's so nice to have all the food in one area and organized. I love not having to reach into cabinets to find the food and it makes putting things away really easy. Having the counter in the pantry allows us to put all the grocery bags there from the store and empty at will without taking up kitchen counter space as well. It's probably one of the best decisions we made and I'm glad we did the walk through. Walking around the whole time would have been a real PITA. Good luck!

That layout sounds kind of like what the 2 bedroom units in the HOA I lived in when we were still in SoCal was like...The vanity area of the bathroom had a closet facing the vanity/sink side that was the two sliding door type, with a door to the toilet/tub+shower part of the bathroom to the right (left if you're coming in the door from the master bedroom) and a door to the master bedroom on the left (right if you're coming in from the toilet/tub+shower part of the bathroom) - another double door slider closet was in the master bedroom. They almost always painted all of the walls, the closet doors, and the doors in/out of each space the same color as the master bedroom because it was adjoining. The smaller bedroom accessed the bathroom through another door off the upstairs hallway, so sometimes that smaller bedroom would be painted a different color but not always. White (the same one as was used elsewhere) was a popular and sensible choice, you can always add color with accessories and art! White bedding can start to look dingy if you don't wash it in hot water (occasionally adding bleach to go into the load while it's running), so think about how much 'maintenance' you're willing to do before buying all the bedding in white (sheets and pillowcases in white aren't as big of a deal because you typically have 'decorative' pillows and a comforter/duvet covering them when you get the bed made each day). :) When we had the house on the market the 'stager' had us buy one of those cheap bed-in-a-bag comforter/shams/decorative throw pillow sets in white with a little area of patterned print down at the part that goes on the foot of the bed, which I thought was totally impractical given that our dog loves being on the bed and washing the thing would have made the fiberfill migrate around so it would be lumpy when it went back on the bed! At least the place sold in less than a month after being listed so we didn't have to worry about it for very long. :P