Here's a lovely new movie to play with: this one has my own art work and photos on the walls, and the actual view, or something close to it, from the living room and bedroom. It also show the cypress tree through the side windows in the living room, and West Ham on the TV!

I'm a little closer to something, although I'm not sure what, exactly. I'm in discussion with several concrete contractors about foundations (that I can actually pay for!), and with several GCs about handling the whole project. I'm also close to closing escrow for the land but that is dependent upon getting the OK from the city to build the house.

I spoke to the city yesterday, and although they are not finished with my application yet - they still need to get comments from the engineering dept - they did agree to fax me the comments so far. And there are a lot of them, around 45, so I'll need to get together with all of the relevant parties (engineer and architects) to so that we can resubmit. Then it should only take another week or two to get the permits.

And then I can start... IF I have a contractor in place, and IF I have an acceptable bid for the foundations.

In the meantime, I actually bought my kitchen yesterday, because IKEA has a 20% sale on kitchens, and it ends this weekend. So I bought and paid for all of the kitchen cabinets and appliances. The cabinets are per Rocio's spec, high-gloss white Abstrakt panels on white Akurum cabinets. For those of you keeping score at home, the appliances consist of the Energisk B18 fridge/freezer, the Eldig cooktop, the Nutid dishwasher, and the Hovskar single lever kitchen faucet . If anyone wants to know why IKEA, well - $5K for the lot, including shipping. That's why!