How to spruce up a kitchen for $500 when you are selling a home.

It is time to put he house on the market, and everything looks OK, but the kitchen isn't quite up to speed. It might be just a little bland, or feel a little off, but we all know that the kitchen is one of the major selling points of a home. So what to do?

First off, clear out those cabinets! Buyers might not all open the kitchen cabinets when they tour your home, but some will and do you really want them to see shelves packed to the gills? No, clear things out and give your kitchen a mini-staging of sorts. Leave what you need to function, but clear out all the unnecessary stuff. You know you have stuff that can get packed up, we all do!

While you are doing all this, take a good hard look at it and see just how clean is it. Has the grease taken up residence in the nooks and crannies? It may be time to break out the cleaning gloves and really make the cabinets shine. After you get done, if you have wood cabinets and they are dinged up, you may consider giving them a wipe down with Old English if you can find some. For cabinets that have a haze to the clear coat on the porous ends like a lot of the oak cabinets doors get (or like in my house where they used cheap finish) then find some spray varathane or polyurethane. Sand off any loose material and a quick coat or two will really make a difference! As an aside I have found this is a great way to breath some new life into oak bathroom vanities as well.

How is the lighting? If the fixture in the kitchen is out of date or isn't putting out enough light then it is time to find a replacement. I have a preference for sleek enclosed fluorescent lights in the kitchen and I can usually find decent ones for under $75, but you will have to see what works in your space. Just please, no nasty cheap track lights over the stove please. They get gross and nasty in a very short amount of time. Take one more look around. Is the space under the cabinets dark and spooky? For a very reasonable price and a little bit of time, you can install under the cabinet lights that plug into a wall socket.

Ok, so things are clean and the finish is looking better again. What about the knobs and pulls? Do you have any? Are they clean and pretty? Replacing all the knobs and pulls in a kitchen is where you will really can give a kitchen some pop. Good knobs and pulls aren't cheap by any means, but they are the topper to the cake that really can make a kitchen stand out. If your knobs are ready to be replaced (or you don't have any) then count up what you need and go shopping. I like the Internet, just make sure that you have an accurate count of what you need, and that you shop around. Prices can vary considerably! One other tip on hardware, if you go to a big box store for yours, don't assume that all the knobs and pulls in any one bin are the same. Make sure that you check each one as you pull them out, and that they are all the same!

So for a few dollars and a little time, you can really make a kitchen shine. No, it won't make up for peeling flooring, or burned laminate counter tops, but it will take a kitchen that is just so-so and make it look nice again.