Resolutions are easy to give up if you start too hard. If you resolve to run a marathon, you shouldn’t just go out and run 10 miles if you can’t even run for 10 minutes; you need to start off with small steps and increase the distance gradually.

So I decided to start off easy. I wanted to begin with a project that I stare at every time I am sitting down and doing my business. No, I am not talking about real estate and phone calls…I am talking about reading the paper, which means I am playing on my iPhone and checking out status updates on Facebook.

Before I explain my first project, I should give you a little back story on me and my house: I purchased my home before I was a Realtor and the bubble hadn’t popped yet. I was ambitious, I thought that I would live here for 5 years, fix it up and sell the house for a lot more money. I was an investor; and I thought I was an experienced one at that. My home, an 80 year old house, with 4 bedrooms, 2 full and sort of two half bathrooms (I will write about that at some later time). I was sort of handy. My father was a master carpenter for most of his life and I had run a painting and contracting business.

Boy, was I was dead wrong. Two years later, and for whatever reason I decided to start in real estate when it crashed (more on that later). When the housing market crashed, the bank took away my line of credit that I was going to use to finish the house.

Today, it’s 8 years later and I am still living in the same 80 plus year old home, with many of the original projects I was so ambitious on accomplishing, still waiting to be tackled. The original wooden doors throughout the house have beautiful glass knobs as door handles, with an original simple mechanism for the lock, and a Skelton key that can be used on both sides. I know. They actually have these door handles and locks in houses. Can you believe it?

Back to the lock: well, here I sit and stare at this missing screw. And it’s been this way since I purchased the house, 8 years ago. Today, I was sitting there doing my morning business and I looked up. BAM. Missing screw. It pissed me off. So I have taken pictures and I am headed straight to my local hardware store in Havertown, literally a block and a half away, to find the screw I need. 4 down and counting.