The best advice I've ever gotten here on the District is try to give the house a chance to talk to you and tell you what it needs. If you're anything like me, this sounds impossible to do, but if I can do it, so can you.
If you have immediate needs (categories above), those do get priority. Yet at the same time, try to spend a little time each day inside and out with your house and get familiar with it. Look for clues about changes over time. Learn to admire the forethought put into, say, the available view from a window if a person happened to be looking through it from outside, and how an interior doorway nearby is just at the right spot to not continue the view straight into one of the bathrooms. (This revelation came to me one day when I opened the bathroom door to say something to my spouse, and for some reason my eye drew to the doorway between our parlor and dining room and the brilliance of the placement just hit me in the weirdest "very nice" kind of way. "That's why it's so close to the ouside wall!
)Having said that, there were some things that could not wait (insulation in the attic since we had none), like when the main pipe off our boiler suddenly sprung a leak. (That's when we found out we had brass--not discolored galvanized plumbing--under the foam insulation wrap mixed in with many, many other types). As soon as weather permitted, since we're in NE, I spent most of my efforts outdoors. I started some regrading work, and did my best to tame the jungle that had sprung up in many neglectful years. I did also do some tiny repairs like fixing the depth of our screen door catch so it would stop blowing in strong winds, remedy the missing strike plate for the basement door that loved to creeeakkk open creepily--that sort of thing.
There was one project I started in the kitchen I shouldn't have, but the inconvenience was minimal, and we still prefer the beat up cracked lino to the cheap fake wood vinyl planks any day (Color! Thank goodness for some color!). Still...I have been good and didn't rip up the rest in the dining room or hall/closet yet even though I know the sheet runs through them.
My biggest thing I've been itching to do is paint. The POs repainted the entire place (cheaply and in true Drunken Weasel fashion) blah beige as part of their "spruce it up for sale so the selling agent stops nagging us" effort. Yes, paint is cheap, but even minimal work still needs to be done before it's worth us painting any of the walls, so we put the money elsewhere and I just hid as much as I could manage with furniture and putting in as few new holes as possible for art until we can do it right.
Also, if you do plan to do most of the work yourself, I highly recommend spending some quality time with your town's building codes. Also find out as soon as possible if there's any kind of a group that supports historical restorations in your area. That way, if you have to fix your porch rail, and the town says "Nope, if you touch that, it has to be 'this' high now", which will ruin the balance of the architecture, you can go to your historical buddies to help them convince the town that 4" difference isn't going to kill anyone.
Also, if you are lucky enough to have a local plumbing/electrical supplier that sells to homeowners or non box lumber yard or hardware store, be nice to them. In time, they will tell you great secrets (not gossip...actually useful to know stuff, sometimes about where you live). They will also take the time to explain things at length and in detail if the shop isn't busy while you make furious notes.
As to insurance, one thing that came up when we went over our policy was our company charges a bit more because we have some lathe and plaster (we're still not sure how much l&p versus cement board stuff that's not modern drywall). They do that because it costs more for demo and hauling away--something I would have never thought of if I didn't ask "why?" We went with a local because they had good ratings, fair rates, and I wanted to be able to walk into an office and talk to our agent if need be instead of dealing with strangers each time I tried to call an internet only place.
As to blogs, I always intended such. Instead, my Beebe thread sort of filled that gap, and later even my garden thread too when Mick added that subforum for us. I just last week finally made a free wordpress blog for garden related things, but I already know I'll be lucky to have time to post once a month unless I just post images with captions.
Looking forward to your progress reports, and I hope your move goes smoothly.
