Everything you said from a cursory look, can be done. Just takes some perseverance that's all...
As far as the button for changing status goes, sorry to sound like an ass but it took a great amount of work for me to get it working for MSNM 7.5 and then it took Willz forever to port that to 8.0 and subsequently 8.5.
As this point it really is upto him as to whether he will hand it over or not, but really, even if he doesn't spoon feed you with it, that is really the whole point of the plus skinning system, openness, so just open up any skin that willz have made recerently and look carefully for the "custom" button he added. Just know that you will have to forgo certain functionality (essentially you are replacing a dropdown menu with your own contents). If you can piece together something, perhaps we will be more willing to help
.
Edit: Upon re reading your post, I'm not too sure whether you can put a contact's status next to their name in a contact window...
Again, posting what you have now would be nice
.
/ 
