Here we go again!

We put an offer in on a house yesterday. Hoping to hear back today. The house is a 4 bedroom 2 bathroom colonial about a half mile from my parent's home (read: built in baby sitters!...in a few years). It has a screened in porch on the front, lovely hardwood floors on the first floor, a great U shaped kitchen with Corian countertops, separate living and dining rooms (with room to entertain), a big basement for storage, a loft space on the second floor that will be great for office-y space, and the bedrooms have some of the most amazing light I've ever seen. The back yard is terraced, creating a lot of privacy from the neighbors and, essentially, a wall of green to look at. It's also a half block away from a big park with soccer and baseball fields and plenty of playground equipment. With all that said, it does need some work. But it's all things that do not need to be done before or soon after we move in. Right now I'd want to do the following things (which I know is ridiculous since we haven't heard back on the OFFER yet). -Fix up the front porch. Right now, it's very dark and unfinished. I don't think the last owners used it much. The bottom half of it was - Clean up the yard. Most of it is very overgrown and pretty weed ridden. We'd like to take the overgrowth out and replace it with some easy-care plants. - Make-over the fireplace in the living room. It's red brick, and it's just very dated. I have a couple of ideas for it. We could just paint it, or I found this solution involving wood trim (and a tiny budget...$82)

Photos from The Lettered Cottage Before After

And of course much painting will occur, because I am not afraid of COLOR. Pretty much all of the trim in the house is still natural wood that has been stained, but I'm not a fan of that look so I plan on painting all of that. I've always been a fan of the decorator's phrase "Just because it's wood doesn't mean it's good." So, hopefully we'll have a house soon!