MFilesAPI - SearchCondition for a property value which is a single select lookup from a value list

Question

I have a value list, I'll call it VL.Statuses. I'm trying to search for objects which have a particular status, which is defined by its workflow state. We're unable to use a vault application due to security and performance restrictions, hence I can't use a workflow state action, so I'm trying to search for objects that have their PD.Status property set to a particular value in VL.Statuses. PD.Status is of type single select lookup.

This is where I'm currently at:

SearchCondition scWorkflowState = new SearchCondition();

    // condition type
    scWorkflowState.ConditionType = MFConditionType.MFConditionTypeEqual;

    // condition expression
    scWorkflowState.Expression.SetPropertyValueExpression(
        vault.PropertyDefOperations.GetPropertyDefIDByAlias("PD.Status"), 0);

    // typed value
    scWorkflowState.TypedValue.SetValue(MFDataType.MFDatatypeLookup, 
        vault.ValueListItemOperations.GetValueListItemByID(117, 6).Name
    );

117 is VL.Status's ID, 6 is the desired item ID.

I understand that this probably wont work, because the datatype is Lookup, and that is a string/text value. Does anybody know how I can convert this VL item to a lookup, or is there a better way to do this?

Bonus Question: How do I explicitly convert Date property values to DateTime and vice versa?