Glad you had a happy ending! I fully understand financing the kids wants and the needs of a new house.
We moved our 6 kids into this house 25 years ago. To say money was tight is an understatement. The livingroom/listening area was much larger, and I needed longer speaker cables. Based on numerous accounts that speaker wire doesn’t make a difference, I bought cheap wire. The system never sounded great in the new space, and I attributed it to room acoustics, and lost some interest in it. I busied myself with the new house, raising kids, life, etc and played mostly CDs on holidays.. I ended up selling my AR turntable with a Premier MMT arm and Grado Signature 8 cart (regret #1). The LPs got relegated to the crawl space, where they suffered some water damage during a torrential downpour. (regret #2) 😥
It turns out that speaker wire does matter. 🙄 Once there was cash for decent basic 12 awg OFC copper wire, the system sprang back to life, and revived my interest in the system. The TT eventually got replaced (but I still miss my AR). I’ve since cleaned up many of the LPs, but the covers are mostly trashed. Vinyl is expensive, but I still make some purchases, and get LPs for gifts...still a treat!