Thanks for the response.
I did notice what you were saying about the textures/model/race.  I played around with that a little bit last night to try and fix it.  It didn't take for me, but I did realize you can have some very strange looking cyclops/hill giants with the wrong mix 
I ended up resolving my issues by actually bringing an npc with the model I wanted to the zone that I was working on :
#dbspawn [id]
#npcspawn add
zone out/zone in and there it was, looking just how it should.
In regard to GeorgeS tools, I downloaded all of them.  They work quite well.  However, when I am attempting to customize items, I get a run-time error saying that it can't find the spells_new table in my database.  Again, much searching ensued and I tried a number of things, to no avail.  What I am wondering now is why I don't have that table in my database ... I downloaded the package deal from ProjectEQ, and installed according to all instructions.  For some reason, I am missing that table.  I can edit most properties of an item, but certain aspects, like anything to do with focus/clickie/worn effects throws that error.  
Any clue why I wouldn't have that table?  My guess is that the ProjectEQ package doesn't require it.  Everything I was searching on seemed to talk about that table like it's supposed to be there.  Where should I have downloaded my installation from?  I chose ProjectEQs because it seemed easiest.