How to increase the value of your home
By Vicki Lankarge Daniel J. Nahorney

How to increase the value of your home: Home improvement is our new national pastime.

My coauthor Vicki and I can say that unequivocally because of one stunning fact: Consumers spent a record $163 billion on home improvements in 2002, and that was easily surpassed in 2003, as they sunk more than $200 billion into their homes.

This trend has spawned all kinds of “how to” books.

How to build a deck, how to fix your kitchen, how to wire a house, and how to fix your plumbing.

But our book is a little different.

It’s a “how to” book that shows you how to tackle home improvements so that you actually increase the value of your home.

This book-How to increase the value of your home will help you decide where to start.

Should you begin in the kitchen with the dark brown cabinets, the dark brown burlap on the walls, and the ceiling fixture with two 15-watt light bulbs?

Or perhaps in the formal dining room with the black spiral staircase? Or the front hallway with the closet painted like a circus tent with alternating chartreuse and white stripes?

Don’t laugh. I was faced with remodeling all three.

The first two have come and gone, but I just won’t let my wife Janet paint that closet.

That’s because when we get compliments about our house, I want people to know that it didn’t always look the way it does today.

Having a book like this-How to increase the value of your home when we first started our home remodeling odyssey would have saved us from some early mistakes.