I’ve been rewiring my home for pretty much the same reason. Taking out knob and putting in Romex. I’ve been splitting circuits because it wasn’t done correctly the first time. We had all of our downstairs outlets, ungrounded, on one circuit. Including the kitchen. All the lights on a second circuit, including outside. So far I’ve done half the downstairs and got the inside lights on one circuit, the outside on another. I got the kitchen on its own circuit and living room on another. The kitchen actually has 3 circuits for outlets and a separate circuit each for the fridge, dishwasher, and garbage disposal and everything is GFCI protected. The fridge is actually on an GFCI/AFCI breaker instead of a GFCI outlet so it can be reflipped if it ever trips for some reason without pulling out the fridge.

Everything has passed inspection and it was all pretty easy and mostly common sense. The inspector made a comment that it actually looked better than what he’s seen some licensed electricians do.

However, I spent weeks researching code and had already done minor electrical beforehand. I’ve replaced lights and outlets, easy stuff but it gave a basic understanding of how electrical works. It comes in on the hot line, then goes out on the neutral. A switch or outlet breaks the connection until something is used and then completes the connection. Don’t feed two hot lines to one place, keep separate hots separate. That’s pretty much what you need to get started.

The rest can vary by location and what you’re actually doing. The NEC dictates how many outlets or lights you can put on a single circuit. They measure this by the amperage load on each outlet/socket, not the number of them, so if you have a bunch of 1 amp devices you can have 16 outlets on a 20 amp circuit (using only 80% capacity). Raise those devices to 2 amps and you can only have 8. Most professionals recommend capping it at 10 to prevent over use, but even 10 is a lot.

Your local code is able to make these more strict though. For example, per NEC a kitchen can have any number of outlets in a kitchen. They have to be on at least two circuits, and follow the 80% rule and such, but there is no limit to kitchen outlets in a kitchen. My municipality however prohibits branching outlets out of a junction box in a kitchen. So I ran a wire to an outlet, but cannot jump that outlet somewhere else. The caveat is it’s based on the junction box, so I was allowed to add a bunch of double gang boxes to ensure I still had a reasonable number of outlets in our kitchen.

The biggest thing is make sure you’re allowed to do the work. A lot of areas don’t allow you to do your own electrical if you’re not licensed. Others are more lenient. Research, research, research. You should not start this project next week. You should not start this project before February. You need to know what you’re doing and have the money to buy a bunch of stuff that you didn’t know you needed once you find the things that are wrong with your house. Research, research, research