Boone, when you say "an older home" and "built in '94", I have to presume you mean 1894? 1994 sure isn't an older home! At least not where I'm from....
I'd be elated to have DSL! A hot-spot through the cell phone would be 5x faster than what we have! sigh. The house we bought two years ago is, to us, almost brand new--it was built around 1985!
It had a couple of "surprises" as well (we knew about them, sort of, but we didn't know quite how bad it was...). First thing we did was tear out all of the original PVC water supply plumbing. It was brittle and none of the shut-off valves worked. We put in about 300' of PEX (seems like a lot for a 1 story house!). Then we went to troubleshoot why some of the outlets didn't work and found the wiring in the attic shorting to ground through the frame of the house!
We kept smelling a smokey smell--that explained it! Spent the next few months replacing ALL of the wiring, switches, and outlets. Everything was done wrong. Not just poorly--downright wrong! The switches were all on the neutrals. The breaker box was overloaded. Anyhow, miles later it all works. We even have two, 200 Amp breaker boxes now (technically not to code.... but the power coop even agreed it was necessary). Still have the garage and two workshops to finish before I can say "that's done"! Then there's the kitchen remodel (ah, that'll end up being a 2/3 of the house remodel when we finish tearing out walls and rearranging the rooms!). I think you got off easy, there....
(Just kidding, it's never fun to find those surprises!)