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"Since 2007, Patricia O&amp;#039;Dell Shackelford has been writing a blog on the passion and adventure of decorating at Mrs. Blandings. Recently in a new home, she&amp;#039;ll be sharing the joys and tribulations of making it her own here. While I am a skeptic about people, I am an idealist when it comes to houses. Each of the three times I&amp;#039;ve been on the hunt, I&amp;#039;ve been far more concerned with how a home feels than anything else. I can overlook elements that might flash &amp;quot;caution&amp;quot; to a more rational buyer. In every house I&amp;#039;ve ever seen I could have passed on visiting the basement altogether. To me, basements are irrelevant. Light. Character. Energy. These are the things that matter. If there&amp;#039;s a little water in the basement when it rains, well, no one&amp;#039;s perfect. Recognizing a house&amp;#039;s (sometimes hidden) potential is a component of this idealism. If the house has good light, charming character, and a pulse of positive energy, I can overlook nearly any cosmetic hiccup. Ugliness or wear or neglect can be corrected. At least in theory.  My new house, the third of my adult life, was the first house that popped up on my computer search that made me lean closer to the computer and say, &amp;quot;Oh!&amp;quot;It was the first house that I saw and the only one I seriously considered. It rained the day I saw the house for the first time. Deemed a &amp;quot;Kansas City Shirtwaist,&amp;quot; it is Craftsman style, though not a bungalow. Skinny and tallish, it is 100 years old this year. The first two floors are basically three rooms and some plumbing. Living room, dining room, bedroom and a kitchen down. Three bedrooms and a bath up. The third floor is very charming unfinished attic space that each of my boys has &amp;quot;dibs&amp;quot; on if it&amp;#039;s ever finished; I am eyeing it for my office. Even dusty and bare, it preens in its wantedness. Even though the previous owner&amp;#039;s decor was not my taste, I knew I could be happy here. I could see my furniture here. I could see myself here. I could see my boys here. The other five houses that my agent made me look at were fine. They had potential, too (and better bathroom situations, honestly) but they were not quite right. They were not quite this house, which was ours already, though we had to talk about a lot of numbers (which I hate) and sign a bunch of papers (which I hate) before it was actually so. Once the talking and signing were complete, I had to think about moving and I had to think about what needed to be done to make that happen. I did not have a huge budget, but did have a little money. I needed to be careful about what I could do myself and what I should pay to have done. So through the course of this move, I developed three steadfast rules for deciding when to DIY and when to hire a professional. I hope they&amp;#039;ll serve you well:  1. Will you put it off or lose interest before you finish?  A room lovingly (and beautifully) painted by the author. You should know that I love to paint. Inexpensive, relatively low-skilled and hugely satisfying, painting is for me. I&amp;#039;ve painted nearly every room of every house I&amp;#039;ve ever owned. Some twice. Every room in this house needed to be painted, which was exciting. But there was a lot of stained trim that needed painting, too, which was not exciting. Let&amp;#039;s be clear: A lot of stained trim.  After the closing, a very wise friend stood in my living room and drew her brows together and said, &amp;quot;You&amp;#039;re going to paint all of this woodwork yourself?&amp;quot; When I nodded yes she said, &amp;quot;You&amp;#039;re crazy. That&amp;#039;s going to take you forever. Hire a painter to do that. You just paint the walls. That&amp;#039;s the fun part anyway.&amp;quot; This is why we are friends. She&amp;#039;s smart and she looks out for me. 2. Are there major consequences if something goes wrong?  The stunning floors, post-professional treatment. Both the stained trim and the floors were a yellow-orange color that I knew would haunt me if left them unattended. I have lived in two other houses where I did not care for the floor color and had thought I could overlook it. I couldn&amp;#039;t. How could I? You can&amp;#039;t ignore a bad floor. It&amp;#039;s constantly underfoot. So I bit the bullet and had them redone. Honestly, the thought of sanding and staining wood floors did not occur to me this time, but it has before. Machine sanders can do serious damage if you don&amp;#039;t know what you&amp;#039;re doing. Smarter to pay up. 3. Are you being penny-wise and pound-foolish?  A glimpse at the ultimate schlep - courtesy of Getty Images. I did not move far and schlepped a lot of stuff back and forth in my car. I was making trips anyway and wanted to avoid paying for moving men to load and unload boxes that I could move myself. But I made a major error deciding to move my clothes. What would have easily gone into a couple of wardrobe boxes, which would have cost nearly nothing to move, became trunk-load after trunk-load of sweaters in bags and dresses on hangers piled into my car. It was a messy, frustrating experience. Lesson learned. In the end, I&amp;#039;d made a couple of good decisions and one not-so-good. (It&amp;#039;s hard to overstate the frustration of clothes falling off hangers. Really, nothing bad happened.) If the rest of the decoration of the house and all the other things that come next work as well, we will be in good shape indeed. Tell us: How do you decide what gets done by the pros and what you can take on? And check in next week for more from Patricia O&amp;#039;Dell Shackelford. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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