Good software for developing a nice website?

I am a good PC (windows) developer, but I have always struggled to design nice looking websites.

Just recently I have been offered some good money by a friend of a friend to design a nice site. It is not a big site with 1000s of pages, but simple with a few frames and tables required.

Although I can use frontpage and the other things like this, I always find that they give this "i was created in frontpage" look and feel about them.

I have VS.Net and all the rest, but again I struggle to make something that looks good.

What I want to know, is there any nice freeware or shareware applications around that help the developer produce really nice looking, but simple, websites?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you

Rodney