Costs to Deduct as Expenses or Depreciate?

[Amy Tsao]

I buy single family residential homes and usually spend between $5K-$10K rehabbing them into rentable condition before placing tenants in them. It includes anything from painting to replacing light bulbs to hanging doors to replacing toilets to fixing sprinklers to pressure washing the house. How do I go about separating the costs between an repair or an improvement when it is all done by one contractor all about the same time? I wish there was a definitive list of what the IRS would consider a repair versus an improvement. If all repairs are done in one big project, is that considered an improvement?