[jtdraig]

One thing that we did before we put our house on the market was to tear out the kitchen and put in a beautiful, state of the art, and very charming kitchen. You had to see this to believe it. We had a Mass. Bay Colony Reproduction Cape circa 1640....but the kitchen had a fireplace that you could almost walk into. When we tore out the cabinets, I discovered a wooden ceiling that someone had covered with wallboard. Once we tore all that out and had the new cabinets installed, I redid the ceiling and painted it. We then tiled the floor after I ripped out all of the crappy white tile. We put in splashguard tiles; a new chandelier to match the colonial setting; and, painted the walls. The point of all this is we invested about $35K saving a bunch in sweat equity and got back roughly double that in the sale price of the house (per our realtor and appraiser) . I have absolutely NO doubt that St Joseph helped out but that's a long, long story. I hope things go well for you...my wife literally dragged me here and I am a converted Villager!!!!