Renovating and repairing old home... suggestions??

[Rachel]

When we were thinking about buying our new house, we hired an inspector to go through it to point out problems.

If you didn't have an inspection prior to buying the house, you may want to consider one now to determine which things are health and safety issues and which things could wait.

Also, the very first thing we wanted to do when we bought the house was rip out the gas fireplace and replace it with a woodburning one. We are so glad that we didn't. We use the fireplace every morning and it really heats up the house. Our old house had a woodburning fireplace and we found it too much of a bother to build a fire.

I agree whole heartedly. The hauling of wood is a real pain and we had our wood burning fireplace converted to gas for the same reason. Since you don't know the condition of the chimney or where your damper is, don't use the fireplace unityou have the thing inspected. Also I would want to have a plumber check out the gas line, etc.