Flip This House

I have been watching a TON of renovation and buying/selling shows lately.
Actually HGTV has taken over the Young and the Restless if you can believe it. House Hunters, Buy me, Sell this House, Flip it, Holmes on Homes ect ect ect.
It seems that I have now become obsessed with the idea that this spring/summer we will be selling our house and buying a new one.
I just want to be informed and prepared. First off we will have to sell this house, and I'm figuring out the minimal amount of work that needs to be done at the lowest cost to get the price we want. That I'm pretty sure I have down. In that department I just want to do it right the first time. I can't stand the idea of it taking months to sell. Especially with a newborn in the house.
Next is the house we want to buy. As most of you know there are two houses on Adam's farm. One is the original homestead his ancestors built. It is not for sale and if it were is 125 000 more than what we can afford. However our little son would be the seventh generation McNish to grow up in it and it would be our DREAM.
Than there is the other house. It is another original but built by one of the brothers that came over from Scotland. More of a cousin lineage than direct. It is for sale right now and is our price !!!!!! However it is missing some key elements to make it our dream country home.
I don't want to buy the house and stare down the road at the other and not be satisfied. SO.....
Last night I compiled a list of stuff....o.k EVERYTHING I would want to do to this house now and in the near future. This includes pool, garage ect... and the total estimated funds would be around 45 000$ to make it into something we would love.
Sounds like alot of money, BUT if we buy the house at say 189 900, put 45 000 into it over a few years, it would easily increase the value to 300 000!!!! That is if we decided to try to sell it for whatever reason. It is STILL cheaper than the old stone house which right now would sell for 325 000.
INTERESTING
So now we are going to crunch numbers, find out where the money would come from to do what we need to do.
All those ''flip this house'' shows are definitely paying off I would think because I'm not freaking out over money today.
Besides...that house could be sold before we put an offer in anyway. I just keep praying that Adam gets an interview soon!!!!! If it does sell I can stop thinking and thinking and thinking about buying the house. I will have to let it go....and work on talking the owners of the old stone house to sell to us :)
ttfn
Alyson