So I've been trying to upgrade items armor and weapons both, but although i have all the perks and skill, when I upgrade an item, enchanted or not, it goes from normal to Epic or what have you, but there is no increase in its damage or armor value. Any ideas?

What platform? If on PC, running any mods?

PC, and yeah i have a few mods running. Mostly graphic tweaks. I had a UI but disabled it. Only item mod is Cloaks.

I disabled cloaks and the whiterun mod I had running, same issue. For instance, an iron dagger at 22 dam gets upgraded to Exquisite but no damage increase. Starting to wonder if I should re install?

Hmm. I scanned the files and something seemed to fix it. Odd.