Don't make it nicer than the rest of the homes in the neighborhood or you will never get your money out of it if you sell. You always want to be the 2nd or 3rd nicest house on the street. Words of advice from somebody who has been there.
Thanks Sireland. I understand the concern about getting in too far to recoup the investment. It's part of the daily discussion in our home. Housing prices around here are all over the board. Some really nice places are priced really reasonably while they're asking big money for some of the crappier ones. It's hard to know what the real market price for the house would be. My goal is to get the house done for around a $50,000 investment. If I can pull that off I'm pretty sure I won't take a loss.
Ideally I'd want to move back out to our farm place where I'd be freer to work on projects without having to worry about neighbor issues or storage problems. - But this renovation is getting me burnt out already and I'm starting to doubt I'll really want to start on another after I finish the one I'm working on now. Renting the property is out of the equation. I had gotten burned pretty badly by bad renters before. We're not certain if we'll sell that house or the one we're living in now. Currently the plan is to put them both on the market after we get done and sell the first one that we can and then live in the other.