home-improvement thoughts welcome

My plan for this afternoon is to buy a timer to put on my thermostat. Some months ago, Pepco sent a thing in the bill that offered a couple of money-saving options, one of which was this plan-over-twelve-months thing but where they also, it seemed, rationed your electricity, which I was not in favor of; but one of which was, sign here and we'll come install a doodad so you can, effectively, program your thermostat. Big fan of that option. And I asked the leasing office (because the Pepco flier said if you don't own, we have to know it's okay with your landlord before we do this thing), and they said they'd asked the corporate office and they were looking into it, and nobody has heard a thing since. And I'm confident I no longer have the flier, anyway. But my brother and sister-in-law assure me I can do it myself.

It seems, in fact, as thought what I will need to buy is a thermostat. I can do that. It's installing it that's going to be a challenge. Anyone have experience of this sort of thing and want to come across with some reassurance that it will be a piece of cake and I needn't worry about it at all? (I will be explaining my setup and seeking explicit instructions from the Home Depot folks when I go to buy the thing, never fear.)

i am mighty!

That was trickier than I thought it was going to be?, but I believe I have successfully replaced my thermostat!

... The new box insists that it is presently 72.5 degrees in here, which I think must mean it needs recalibrating, but I don't have another thermometer to tell me what temperature it believes the air is, so I don't know. But: when I flipped the switch back on, the heat came on! It works! Huzzah!

ellen_fremedon, it's going to be more work than you think. Don't freak out. You can do it, honest. Or save it for a time when I can be there with you, on account of now I've DONE IT BEFORE. \o/

update

The new thermostat is now at 69.5, and it feels enough like my parents' place in here (routinely heated to 68) that I no longer suspect the thermometer in the new box is wrong; I now suspect that the thermometer in the old box was insane, and so half my problem all this time is that when it said 65 it was actually heating the place to past 70. (I adjusted it by what it felt like in the apartment, not by what it said - but jesus.)