6 cures for the small-kitchen blues

Expand your kitchen without breaking the bank using these simple solutions from Money Magazine

(Money Magazine) -- Sure, you order takeout three nights a week, and preparing a burger tests the limits of your culinary know-how. But that doesn't mean you don't need and deserve a spacious kitchen. After all, the kitchen has evolved from a room where food is prepared to the hub of a house, where you do everything from eating casual meals to paying the bills and helping Junior with his algebra homework.

Plus, as long as you stick within the norms of the neighborhood, a kitchen expansion is one of the best ways to increase your property value, says Omaha appraiser John Bredemeyer, a spokesman for the Appraisal Institute. "A lot of people buy the kitchen and take the house that comes along with it," he says. "So going from a cooking kitchen to an entertaining kitchen is likely to pay for itself when you sell your house someday."

Best of all, you don't necessarily have to shell out the $50,000 to $100,000 cost of a kitchen addition. Here are some money-saving tricks for enlarging the kitchen - or at least making it seem bigger:

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