Well congratulations on your new home! And welcome to the money pit, er, I mean, home ownership club! I didn't see where you indicated what part of the country you live in. I live in Florida so my priorities might not match yours if you live in a cold part of the country. Generally speaking, my advice is to spend the "hard money" first no matter where you live. The "hard money" is what you spend to protect your investment that doesn't necessarily have any impact on aesthetics. Address structural and infrastructure issues first how is the roof, the foundation, the plumbing, the electricity, heating and cooling systems, windows, doors, floors and walls? It makes no sense to take down a nasty popcorn ceiling and make it beautiful only to have a roof leak ruin it and have to do it again. Likewise I wouldn't get hardwood floors refinished until I knew that my floor joists were sound. So spend the money that seems to go toward invisible things first  this is a major investment in your peace of mind and will help you to avoid spending any money twice. If you didn't have a home inspection before you bought your house, do it now. We bought our house "as-is" from an estate knowing that the seller wasn't going to do any repairs, but we paid for a home inspection to help us prioritize the work that needed to be done and spot things that we might not notice. A good home inspection is worth the money. In the last year, I put on a new metal roof (energy savings and hurricane protection), and all new impact resistant doors and windows (again with the energy savings and hurricane preparedness). The inside is a mess (exposed concrete slab, kitchen remodel in progress, ceiling patches from previous water intrusion). All of my new windows went in with virtually NO damage inside. I did have to touch up the paint job to the outside that was done in March. The new doors were quite another story. But, hey, now that you are a homeowner, you are quickly going to become intimately acquainted with drywall spackle and a putty knife and paint and brush. You can perform minor magic with paint and spackle. That's easy and fairly cheap. Your kid decides to see if a cutting board will fly like a frisbee? Spackle and paint. Fido decides to chew the corner off the wall because you left him at home alone while you went to work? Spackle and paint will fix that, too. Make sure you get enough paint to have some left over when you are done! It comes in handy. When it comes to doing work that is cosmetic, I'd advise you to start at the top and work your way down. If you can get ceiling work  texture and paint  done before moving in, your life will be simpler. Except maybe for carpeting. I have asthma and allergies. Why we didn't pull out the carpeting when we first moved in is beyond me. We've been living with the naked concrete slab for almost a year. Yes, it is ugly. Yes, it spawns dirt moments after it is swept. But I haven't had a asthma attack in a LONG time. Your mileage may vary. You can save a lot of money by being flexible and shopping online. If you "get married" to one specific thing, then you lose options to save money. For example, I knew I wanted a single-lever faucet with a non-polished, white metal finish. I looked at the prices for good brands in person and then I looked to see what I could find online. I found a brushed chrome Price-Pfister single-lever bathroom faucet on eBay for $25; the seller was one I've seen favorably mentioned here. I wouldn't spend over $100 for that faucet, but for $25, I'll pay $10 for shipping, and maybe have to bid on more than one auction to get the minimum bid price. I ended up getting two of them at the minimum bid price in about 24 hours. I didn't get to combine the shipping cost, but I still saved a bundle. Check your local Habitat for Humanity. Mine has a resale store where you can buy building materials for a fraction of retail. I haven't bee there yet  it's probably like thrift store shopping  you never know what you'll find. I was at Blowes today and found fancy white vitreous china bathroom sinks marked down to $19.50 (discontinued item). I don't need a fancy one, but I want white. I can live with the fancy one! My home is not architecturally distinctive in any way, but there is an architectural salvage place not far from here that is chock full of goodies, from door knobs and chandeliers to kitchen cabinets and doors. You can also pick up some good deals by watching Craig's List for your area. Examine everything carefully and use common sense  don't go to a stranger's home to buy something by yourself. Some people have said some very harsh, judgmental things to you. I hope that you will ignore them. I haven't heard you say that your objective in life is to sit in front of the tv and I don't think that it's unreasonable to want ONE orderly space to retreat to. It's not realistic to expect that you will feel like spending EVERY waking moment at work or working on your house. You will need to take breaks and PLAN on down time if you are going to live in your house while you work on it. Otherwise life becomes pretty miserable pretty quickly. You can do this if you want it. Lets face it, you have to live somewhere. You will need to make a priority list that fits YOUR needs. That list can and will change when things happen. Since I moved into this house five years ago, the AC died and had to be replaced ($5K), the power supply to the house died and had to be replaced ($1.5K), my 16 year old dog, 82 year old father in law and 40 year old niece died and can never be replaced at any cost. So I probably spent some time in front of the tv when I "should have" been painting a wall. Don't apologize for wanting some comfort in your life. Best of luck to you. B

Thank you, I could not for the world figure out how to get these pictures in the post, at a reasonable size to view. Appreicate your help.

Life is perfectly normal with contractors in your house. Just a typical day. As usual, you wake up to the sounds of a large expensive item crashing to the floor amid loud swearing in Portuguese. After a relaxing shower surrounded by plastic and crumbling plaster, three strangers comment to each other in foreign languages while taking a leisurely view of you naked. Then you take your place in line for the remaining bathroom. As in any typical day, strange people appear in your room, cut large holes in your walls, and leave, never to return. Your routine will continue to include discovering that someone has rifled through or taken your tools, light bulbs or lingerie. At lunch, you of course find all your food gone, and while you are out getting a sandwich, you do your regular daily stop to purchase 48 rolls of toilet paper which often, but not always, lasts until 5. Meals remain like a Norman Rockwell picture, with granny standing up and eating in her closet and digging chips of plaster out of her food, while you use a Dremel to slice open a can of Chef Boyardee because all of your can openers disappeared on day 2. After dinner, the family can enjoy its usual pastimes, such as visiting the emergency room. Each day, of course, is filled with the typical sounds of suburbia: nonstop banging, the creaking and snapping of the structural members of your house, circular saws cutting through metal, and trucks that idle for four hours at a time with the backup beepers on. Tired but happy, you push the piles of broken lathe and rusty nails off your pillow (oops! There's always one that gets away, isn't there? chortle), nestle your head in a soft mound of plaster dust, and nod off for a restful 2 1/2 hours of sleep, before it all starts all over again. Really, life just goes on as normal. Nothing to worry about.

Our large family does a lot of family get togethers. Two ovens is definitely a plus when preparing meals for 20-30 people. My kitchen has just one oven, but I have a large bbq and a tregger grill and like to prepare steaks and other meats with the sous vide method, so a single oven has worked based on the use of alternative cooking methods. My two sisters both have 2 ovens, but are less inclined to use other cooking methods. Their homes and double ovens are a necessity for Christmas baking. One oven doesn't work when you are baking 10 dozen anything. My one sister has a double wall oven / cooktop and my oldest sister has a range and a single wall oven. Baking dozens of cookies with one person in charge of ovens works best with the two wall ovens. Cooking large meals with a lot of different dishes seems to work better with the single wall oven and the range. We seem to work around each other better with this setup. I was also surprised when I talked to my sister recently and she told me that she isn't in love with her huge island for day to day cooking (I think it is about 8' x 4'). It is the bomb when we have 5 or 6 of us together baking pastries. Her problem is constantly walking around the island when making a small meal. I have been giving a lot of thought to my kitchen reno - coming up next year. Not sure what is most important, but I am leaning toward maximizing my counter space over additional cooking space. The most important thing is that the kitchen functions well for you and your family and that is different for every family.