I like it a lot, especially for a first draft of a first model.
Durandal, I thank you on his behalf for your detailed and helpful criticism of the model. As for your last point; like you said, he'll probably merge the excess pollies when he's done. It's always helpful to already have the extra polygons while working, so that you can add details to something just by moving the vertices, instead of having to create new polygons first.
