Home Improvement

how do you prioritize your home projects when under budget constraints and they are of equal importance or unimportance?

I'm a fan of lists for this type of thing. Include how many hours of work and cost today and the costs and time if you skip it for a couple years. As in peeling exterior paint is cheap today, but if not addressed, you're replacing boards for much more time and cost.

how do you deal with the overwhelm/frustrations of previous owner issues or poor workmanship?

They were trying their best to keep it in decent shape. Just as you will do the same.

their pets urinated in every room with carpet

There is a product called "Nature's Miracle". It has an enzyme that removes urine smell from carpet. It's sold at pet stores or online. Get the gallon size to start.

Did you get a home inspection? Start with the things on that. If you didn't, then start by reading up on home inspections, and start taking care of those things.

Congadulations on your home! Best advice I can give is go slow. All the DIY stuff has loads of YouTube videos to help you so just take it easy. Anything you can hook up to existing infrastructure, you can tackle easy. Installing new lighting, painting, redoing flooring, new faucets and toilets, etc.

Start top down. Roof, plumbing, foundation, grading, electrical, fixtures, cabinets, counters, paint, flooring. Water is your worst enemy, so deal with all water related problems first. Hire a licensed and bonded tradesmen for any major projects, such as roofing, electrical boxes, water heater or hvac. They will be able to work with permitting. If it’s old enough, a secondary concern will be cloth wiring, which is a fire hazard, also have your insulation checked for asbestos and your paint for lead. You’ll have to hire professionals for abatement.

These all can be done as they come up, but before any major changes are done. An example would be, if you have a boiler and radiator setup, and you want to change to central heat and air, you’ll need to have the wiring changed to handle the new load.

Also good stuff!

For #2, one piece I forgot to bring up is the urgency. One of the reasons I advocate for having a small collection of basic, cheap tools is that there's some cases where you don't have time to get to the hardware store or wait for a delivery. Sometimes you need a wrench NOW to fix a leak. Or there's a foot of snow on the ground, the roads aren't allowed, and something goes wrong with your heat or the pipes are in danger of freezing. Or there was the time I had scheduled my new over to be installed and the old one disposed of: I was responsible for disconnecting the gas from the old oven, but didn't realize until about an hour before that I would need not one but two adjustable wrenches to disconnect it and had to make a mad dash to get another one. I've also had enough issues with toilets that I keep at least one flush/fill valve set and a sealing ring on hand (maybe I need to get a water filtering/conditioning system to go easier on my hardware?). Having a way to move water (either a cheap hand pump or the ability to use a shop vac) can also be critical.

A couple other things I keep in mind with tools are:

How often am I going to use it? A lot of experts giving advice, advocating for expensive tools, are craftspeople who use those tools every day. If I only need that adjustable wrench once a year, the $2 one from Harbor Freight is fine.

And specialized tools are different. It's hard to even try to buy them in advance because you don't know they exist until something comes up. When I looked into converting my home's landline phone network into Internet, I had to get a crimping tool. I noticed the old window AC units has a bunch of bent fins, and research led me to special combs for straightening them.

One advice I haven't seen mentioned: there are tool libraries in many cities where home owners can borrow tools for a low membership cost. This can save you from spending a lot on tools, especially for ones you won't need often.

I'd start with spending my time cleaning.

Then I'd work on whatever bothered me the most day to day. If you notice the issue often, that's the one to fix.

You can rent rug doctor steam cleaners, it wasn't expensive. They have locations listed on their website. https://www.rugdoctor.com/rent/ We did every rug in our house before we moved in. It was amazing the amount of dirt that came out of clean looking rugs.

it’s obvious their pets handled the moving process poorly and have urinated in every room with carpet

Cleaning up pet urine can be really expensive depending on how bad it is. If it's not just a few spots here and there, seriously consider ripping out all of the carpet and padding and living on the floor boards until you can get new flooring.

You should buy a black light. Nothing expensive, $20 or so. And shine it on everything with the lights off, urine glows. As a side note, anyone looking to buy a house, or even get a new rental should get a black light.