There's no reason to do something that brings a ton of stress and anxiety to your life. 

Submit it, close and change your life!!

My thinking is that this is my long term home for later in life, but I want to make it beautiful and use the home as a tent pole for other investments.

Basically, in 1996 a married couple out of “love and affection” for the grantee, gifted the property to her “reserving unto themselves a LIFE ESTATE in the herein real estate”.

I would begin my process with alot of learning, first Youtube because its free ,but  Udemy has some really good stuff on their for people beginnning their SEO/Inbound life on a side note if you get good at this, no one will ever assign you a job again because being a top tier SEO guy is VERY lucrative (I'm trying to get their too!). 

Save a "reserve" so you can handle vacancies, maintenance, and all the bad things that pop up when first buying an investment.My recommendation is that you read a book like "Set For Life" by @Scott Trench and get your financial house in order so you go in prepared.

Thanks @John Warren, I'm trying to play all angles here and am also looking into techniques to extend the life of a deck.

The instructors were phenomenal and made the material much more memorable by providing real-life examples. 

We moved to Wisconsin, mainly motivated by providing a better life for our 1 year old son.

Wanting to have a business of our own and also to have cash flow to supplement our income and life style.