In regards to Brickeyes comments on technology, I could not agree more. I think Brickeye and I are about the same age (59) and thinking back I am amazed at what was science fiction when i was a kid but what is commonplace today. Just a few examples" When we were in school a word processor was a manual device made of wood and graphite with an eraser on the opposite end..LOL. When they landed men on the moon complex math was still being done on slide rules, now I have a wristwatch with a built in calculator that can perform functions that were unheard of on mainframe computers in the early to mid 60's. In Jr.High school every kid dreamed of owning a 6 transistor pocket AM radio receiver. (I actually acquired one by caddying at the local golf course for the whole summer to earn the necessary $36 to buy it.) minimum wage was $1.55 and top union scale was $5/hr. Color TV was still in its infancy and most stations did not broadcast color until the early 60's. FM radio was solely classical and elevator music and of very little interest to young people. When I entered the Air Force in 1966 I worked with a Univac 1066-II mainframe computer system that had a hard drive which was 10 feet long and weighed over 3 tons, yet it only had 66megs of memory, by contrast I have 80 gigs on this desktop and 60gigs in my laptop, both of which are obsolete by state of the art standards. While on the subject of laptops, the only laptops devices we had then was a TV tray for dinner....LOL Cordless tools were totally unheard of. State of the art automotive safety was a padded dashoard and a seat belt. I remember when they came out with a digital clock that had rotating flip cards with the numbers on them and we thought that was the rage. For all you Star Trek fans,,go back and look closely at the first generation scenes, even the spaceship Enterprise did not have LED or Quart Crystal displays. When we were in school the interstate highways system was still a future dream being discussed in Popular Mechanics Magazine. A virus made you sick and spam was that cheap nasty canned meat that you mother made you eat whether you liked it or not, suprisingly I acquired a taste for it and still enjoy it occassionally...LOL. A conferance call was listening in on someone elses phone call on a party line, but don't get caught. Rich people had a garage door opener, the rest of us were lucky to have a garage and if we did it was doubtful if the old doors would swing properly. Gas water heaters were not vented to the outside and many had open steel vessels with no insulation. The house I lived in there was no thermocouple on the gas control. I couldn't begin to count how many times we came home to find the pilot had gone out and the house was full of gas. I am with Brickeye,,I embrace technology.

I feel much like rweigand about it. Make a list of must do's, needs done items and a list of wants/desires. See what those items that need done are going to cost and prioritize the rest of your list. It might help to have a general idea of cost before you start prioritizing your wants. From a real estate perspective it's a good idea to not over improve for your neighborhood... Like littlebug mentioned. You generally don't want to be the nicest home in the neighborhood because you don't help yourself by doing that, you only raise the value of everyone else's home and yours is lowered by those around you. That being said, it's pretty often that kitchens and baths are what help sell a home. If they present a wow factor or are at least pretty nice, they can help make a home more marketable. I understand you are planning on staying there long term but sometimes plans change when we least expect them. I live in an area where some of the nicer newer homes have laminate countertops and vinyl flooring. Shortly after we moved in, about 15 yrs ago, I got an estimate for Corian counters. Egads, after I saw the quote I decided a trip to Disney with memories for my family was more important than pretty countertops and I have lived with the laminate that was there when we moved in. Not hideous, but not my taste. Now I'm looking at butcher block and soapstone counters. The butcherblock will be made by a friend out of locally sourced oak and we are planning to DIY the soapstone if we can source a stone for a reasonable cost. I'm glad today I didn't splurge on that countertop years ago. I know now I wouldn't have loved the Corian because it really didn't go with my home but stone any counters were $$$ in my area back then. We enjoyed having the $ to take a couple of trips when my son was young with the $ we saved.

IMO just like too much cleavage can look tacky so can too much bling and in this case theDR and LR fixtures do not belong in the same house. The DR one IMO is a heavy looking fixture and needs a heavy looking very formal table . I never like center lighting in a LR and especailly a chandelier . IMO a open space requires so connection between the lighting so I would look at coordinating pieces in a small space let the DR fixture be the star and the rest the supporting cast.

@party_music50, I only started trying to compost my leaves this year, the woods around my house had a VERY thick layer of leaves from 20+ years of being left alone! Not even joking, they were knee deep. I have about 4 acres of undeveloped woods, mostly field pine, red and white oak, beech, and maple. And greenbrier... tons and tons of greenbrier :'-( I took the catcher bag off of my electric leaf vacuum, and then spent some time walking around with it, letting it suck up the leaves, chop them up, and then shoot them out the bottom. It was time consuming, but at least now I can walk through it. This is the area that I plan to cut back this winter, and hopefully I can chop the leaves up again and end up with a layer that's thin enough to not choke out the trees and flowers that I want to plant there. I'm guessing that using soda or juice would attract all of the fire ants in my area, though, and I recently discovered that I'm super allergic! Like, emergency-room-allergic :-( So I'm afraid that I might have to skip that idea. I have plenty of homemade urine that I can use, though! LOL