Answering myself. You have to have the saw mill. The log you uncover when de-cursing is not the saw mill despite the fact that you can see a saw buzzing away. It is the magic forest that produces the logs used to make planks, paper, paint palates, and more.

You need three elements to upgrade a fountain. Touch the fountain. You should see an arrow pointing upward. Touch and hold the arrow. You should see which elements you need, how many you need, and what the new amount of time it will take to recharge. If you have the elements and want to upgrade, drag the arrow to the fountain.

Oops. My bad. You do need the green stones to make the ruby stone. I guess I always had enough before. Now I don't have any green stones so it became obvious that I was using them and didn't know it.

I also sold some to get room. Now I don't have enough. I get them by diving but there never seems to be enough.

I don't see a woodworker's bench in the list. I can get another saw mill but no bench. When does it become available?

I had a character ask for planks and glass to do some remodeling. But I can't figure out how to get planks.

The keys are usually in the bags. You open the bags when you have collected enough suns. You get suns by fixing things with the ruby stones. You get the ruby stones from the underwater mine.

I've never needed any stones to complete a dive. There has been mines that will produce the rock with red ruby-like crystals that are used to fix things. I'm at level 32. Does the dive change after that?

The tower is the first piece of the palace. When you finish it you have to finish the smaller star gazer tower. I forget how I got the seal to do it. I was stuck on that for a while. When I went to the game to get the name of the smaller tower I found that clicking on it gave me an option for star magic. I'm not sure what that is yet.