Dang that is a heck of a nice offer, and I sincerely appreciate it. I think though that you all have convinced me that this is not as big a deal as I thought it was going to be and I think I'll probably be good taking a first shot at least. I think for a bit there I was just venting/whining. We're at that point with this house where it's just old enough that it seems every week there's something new that needs attention - or maybe it's just that our kids are at that age where they just break things a lot faster, haha!
Complete side note related to home maintenance though to add a bit of fun... Our dryer vent had not been cleaned out in quite a while and it was taking a long time to dry a load. I tried one of those long-pole brush attachments you hook to a vacuum to from the outside vent - it sucked up a bit, but honestly it didn't seem to help much. Well... last week I crawled around in the basement and pulled the foil tape off the elbow joint on the vent tube and stuck a leaf blower in there on full blast. Holy cow was that a lot of fun to see. Crazy how much lint had built up in the tube and came flying out like a cannon... LOL.