The concepts in the module are pretty straight forward.
I can speak to making the site look like you want, while many don't stray too far from the default template I have seen some very impressive sites. You can send me an email - links at the bottom of our site
www.mods.auscity.com and I'll send you a link for a site made with 68 classifieds, that I like. If you are comfortable with php and smarty, with the developer version there is really no limit to what can be achieved. I wouldn't claim to be the greatest designer but I am pretty happy with how my site turned out.
You never know, you might be wasting even more time testing other scripts when this one might be the one for you.