My 10 acres were within a very small subdivision. We found out about the lot, had it bought and closed on within a month. Paid $650 for the perc test which included his marking boundaries of the property, designing septic, soil analysis and slope information. After reading this I'm glad we didn't know what we didn't know. I am not sure we would have pressed forward without panic first if I read all that. It can be scary, there is so much involved, but if you love it, its all worth the research. This is going to be your home :) Here's what we did...call a lawyer (no real estate agents involved, my dh found the lot on Craigslist~), another reason to talk to the lawyer (we have a creek on our property and had to talk to water conservation society as well - can't build within 50 feet on each side of it, blah blah blah) call a soil analyst (he knew about local well diggers/septic people and county requirements so he taught us as we went along), research HOA stuff (no horses - boo, but chickens for eggs ok, no white siding - boo, but plot, setbacks, building requirements all listed for us), and call your city/county permit office and see what the secretary knows about the development. We're in a little county but it might help you too. Our gal was SO helpful, even giving me the # of the best/but cheapest soil guy who turned out to be a gem. Hope my little bit of experience helps encourage you - we knew nothing compared to all this and have a beautiful piece of property. Hope yours goes as well.

Well, I tried my hand at this Saturday. Local stores didn't have the skirting in stock, so I bought a piece of 1x10 maple (was cheaper than poplar). I did some trials with a circular saw on some scrap wood and found that my saw is the wrong handed and I can't cut the miter the right way from the outside edge. Don't trust my skills enough to cut on a miter from the inside. Next moved on to my big miter saw, got it figured again on the scrap wood, but found, halfway through the maple, that it's not quite big enough to cut to the edge of a 1x10. Finished it off with a jigsaw. Jigsaw does have both-way miter. That's the plan on the next try. I'm thinking I'll just keep the lower edge square instead of routering it into something more decorative, and run it all the way to the floor. Then I'll cut the baseboard at an angle when it runs into it, and butt them together.

Sigh....carpets hide HORRIBLE surfaces. And you've just discovered another place where this is true - the stairs. *In THEORY (ahem....too much work for most professionals - they would skip over to a surface and be done with it), you can TRIM OFF the slight overlap nose on every single tread to create a perfect 90 deg angle for each riser/tread combo. Then you need to STRIP AND SAND down the white material SITTING on the wood. Please check for lead based paint if the house was built before 1978. (If there is LEAD....move on to full removal/replacement of the tread/risers and leave well enough alone.) Once the wood is PERFECTLY CLEAN (and that means free of the chemical STRIPPER you used to remove the white ?paint?), you can then go ahead and putty all the little staple holes and cracks, etc. Then you sand again. This thing should be as smooth as an Ice Rink! Now you are ready to glue down the vinyl and the nosing. Shouldn't take more than a week. Or you source IDENTICAL thickness wood (pressure treated for this purpose) and remove and replace each and every riser and tread. Be aware....as soon as you TOUCH these things, you need to bring the whole thing up to code. Move ONE piece and you need the whole thing to code. And code means "Finishing Carpenter" level of mastery....and legal everything that goes with the title. If you do this, you might as well have them deal with the banister, etc and have everything moved up to code at the same time - no sense in waiting. If you simply resurface the treads with new carpet, you get away from all of this. If you can resurface using the original material, you should be able to keep everything else as-is. As soon as you remove stuff, and "rebuild" then you are getting into so serious code issues. Personally, I would throw down a stunning carpet that compliments the LVT and leave well enough alone. Make it look handsome by using a runner and then fixing/painting out the treads/risers in a pretty way....but it will involve a huge amount of work. Good luck. Check the paint for lead before you do anything else.

@ erett The travertine-look tile is too blue for your kitchen. Sorry but that's going to be one BIG clash. The more marble-y looking one is the best match to the counter tops AND the cabinets. Right now the cabinets are driving everything towards the creams (yellow based white). As for running right over top of the current tile, I am going to caution you to think about this one. Please take the time to purchase an 8ft long level (the metal things with the glass bubble in it) and stretch it across your current floor. See how FLAT and SMOOTH it is. Vinyl is highly flexible. It LOVES to dip down into hollows (grout lines and pits in the tile) and hump over edges (each edge of each tile). We call this telegraphing = horrible thing to have happen when you spend money on a 'perfect' floor. I can tell the tiles have some texture to them. That texture has to be 'knocked down'. That is to say you need to grind them (all that dust you were trying to avoid = still going to happen). And then they have to be filled (leveling cement = SLC). But before you do that you probably have to prime them. Each and every 'high point' of the tiles (normally seen at each and every grout line) has to lie flat against the next tile = filling all grout lines. Whew. The cost of doing that = $2-$3/sf (depends one where you live). The cost of removing the tile = $2-$3/sf. The benefit of removing the tile = you never have to deal with them ever again = very good thing.