Hello,
Welcome to the world of solar energy :-)
It is very hard to answer your question without knowing the requirements for your project.
The first thing you should do is to messure the required power of your loads (light, microwave, pc etc) you need to know how many hours a day you use them, how many watt's they use (both startup and average! - this is important if you need to choose an inverter). you can use this information to calculate which appliances you can run on your solar power.
second, you will be producing power whenever the sun shines, so you need to store the power somewhere for use when you need it (depending of your location, 3 days whithout sunshine is not uncommon) - This requires the use of either a grid-tied controler (take a look at soladin 120 and soladin 600) or a few batteries.
If you take a look at the postings on this board, you will see that ppl recomment that you charge your battery at the amphour rating dived by 10 or 20.
Asuming that your panels and battery are 12v, you can't do with less than a 92 amphour battery. This number is the combined amphour of all of the batteries you have put in your battery bank. This is important if you want to keep your battery-bank healty.
You should get a charge controler rated at 10 amps or more (make room for future expansion if you buy an expensive one).
TomW recomments that you dont use a charge controller, and he's right - you can do without it, but he is an advanced user ;-)
The reason for recommending that you get a charge-controler is that it will protect your battery. It does this by disconnection your load when the battery reaches about 10.5 volt, and as TomW writes in his reply, it will disconnect your solar panel when the battery is full.
I have chosen a Steca Thetra rated at 30 amps. My controller has a few leds which shows the SOC (state of charge) of the batery, the solar panels and the users. It also has some features which are supposed to make my batteries last longer by charging them at the right voltage levels. The only function I am using is the SOC - the rest is just for fun.
The wiring is important too. The correct wire is chosen based on the distance from the solar panel to your batteries. This link has a table showing the wiresize vs. distance. You will lose a lot of energy if you choose an incorrect size.
http://www.windsun.com/Hardware/Wire_Table.htm
Fuses: You should put a fuse on your batery. A battery has the ability to put more than 6200 amps through a shortcircuit for a few seconds (I read a test somewhere on the web) - a fuse is not expensive, and it can save your life/prevent a fire.
Inverter: An inverter transforms 12v into 120/220 volt used by a lot of appliances in your house. You need to pick an inverter which able to deliver the startup load of your appliance - this number is often much larger than the normal load. Remember that an inverter uses power even when it is not used, so appliances which uses 12v should be prefered. If you choose a 10 amp charge controller, then put the inverter directly on the battery - The inverter uses a lot of power when it is turned on.
Check out www.homepower.org there's a few schematics an some other information which you might find usefull.
I hope that this ínformation will help ýou getting a healty and longlasting system up and running.
TomW: Thanks for the tip on running laptops directly off 12v - I'll try it, it might eliminate yet another appliance on my inverter :-)
/Steffen
