Pat yerself on the back. So many folks don't even know where to start...much less actually starting.
I always laughed/cringed at those TV shows where they'd parade people through houses to get their reactions to how the house is laid out/etc...and most folks would comment on the paint colors they hated or the furniture rather than the house itself. Like ya can't paint the wall a different color? No...wait...some can't! Blows-my-mind.
"Stairs" are never fun...especially if you have to have the inspector come. LOL. In fact, none of it is fun if you have those guys in the mix.
I built a log home in my past lifetime and the county it was in was just muy-fucked-up. They hired inspector after inspector...and each would waltz in and start trying to question things that the previous inspector had approved. Nope. Not happening. Fun times...fun times. I hope yer flying under the radar...heehee...
Yeah, I'm pretty much a DIY homeowner with the blinds drawn. I had pros do the roof, windows, siding, gutters and exterior painting, all in one go so everything jived with the next and so my pale norwegian butt didn't burst into flames in the heat. There were also some structural repairs done by them, inspected by the county bribe takers, and I sat back and smoked a bowl of dispensary weed wishing they'd leave so I could start my closet up again.
Inside the house all bets are off, I have a big hammer to tear crap down and not enough common sense to tell me I shouldn't. The first day after we bought the house I replaced the water heater and re-plumbed it. Much to the terror of my wife who'd never seen home ownership. If I find something severe (like the crack in the foundation I found last month,) I call upon a plethora of contractors and engineers that my wife and I have worked with over the years. She's in property management, so she's got a back pocket full of inspection engineers we can call. We had her three favorites check it out and all agreed it was normal settling and to just do a fill and patch.
After my parents divorced, I became the 'fix-it-guy' in the house. Dad yoinked all the 'Time Life Series: Everything Home Repair' books mom bought in the 70's and 80's, so I had to use UseNet forum groups and trade BBS dial-ups in the early 90's to figure out how to fix crap that broke around mom's house. In the late 90's and early 2000's after college I did network engineering to pay the bills between gigs. Learned a few things running wires through 10 story buildings and digging trenches between University buildings to lay fiber trunks.
That experience left me feeling that the internet started as, should always be, and must be protected as if it's the modern version of the Library of Alexandria or the Baitul Hikmah in Bagdad. Want to do something? Let me introduce you to my friend the web. Fix a car, fix a house, fix a computer, repair a dishwasher, grow weed, provide an orgasm, take your pick the information is free and out there, the only reason to say '
I don't know' in the age of the internet is pure lazieness.
As a general rule when I do something in the house my goal is to make an inspector say, "Well that's extravagantly over engineered and far beyond what is needed for code." So far, no one has said any different.
When we sell this place, eventually, I hope, someday soonish, I want to have a back yard I can have a plumber run plumbing and waste lines, have an electrician provide me with at least 100 amps, have a team come out and lay a perfectly flat level slab, and from there I'll build the rest of
Dad's Outhouse (working name that makes wife and child groan) where I build my recording stuido with sound proofing throughout, a billiards room with a weed and soda bar, woodworking workshop, and grow room. I'm calling this remodel, "practice" for that project I've already started designing in AI driven archetecture software. Not a day of archetecture class in my life, but the software pretty much does all the math.