With freeze thaw it will keep you from getting patches of ice or at least greatly reduce them.

I will use generic beige colored tiles.Sheet vinyl seems to hold up for several years, and I get the stuff that has 12x12 patterns printed on it, so my floor guy can patch sections...but I really want to try tile to see how long it holds up.

Sand, patch, and stain, new 3/4" plywood sub-floor for an industrial look. $1,000 - all materials and labor included.

i would buy a wooded patch of land and build a paintball field..

You'll be ripping out quite a bit of drywall in the interior of your home but if it's been painted in the last five years, patching, taping, and colormatching the old paint to the new upgrade work will be relatively easy and cheap.

He says we need to repair the sidewalks, driveway, paint the aluminum siding, reseed the lawn and do something about the patch of mulch from the tree.

Don't try to patch.  

The trouble is that if you know you're going to sell a property and use cap-ex as a way to derive value you could replace carpet instead of cleaning/patching.

You definitely don't want to invest a ton of money and have it look like a 1/2 updated building.My only advice would be that if you are going to do it, do it now while it's semi-vacant, you can patch any areas, maybe get a bulk price on windows, etc.  

They'll tell you what you've got - type of mold or mildew or whatever.If it's toxic mold, the best advice would be to get a professional remediation company to deal with it.  9 times out of 10, it's not toxic, but you still don't want those spores to spread when you remove the drywall (and yeah, with that big and dark of a patch, I'd remove it rather than try to kill it and paint over it).Wear a respirator.Get a roll of painter's plastic and tack it to the drywall in an area much larger than the area where the mold is.