All Forum Posts by: Jacob Edmond

I worked construction between high school and college, then got a BA in architecture while interning for an architecture firm. Like many others I also had lawn businesses, in middle and hugh school, and then my senior year  in college. Since then I have worked for millwork and casework companies as a custom impact and design pressure rated (hurricane rated) door maker, production manager as well as a draftsman and project engineer. I now am the engineering manager for a commercial millwork and casework company by day.

I should add that my wife has the business background, with a BS in management. She worked as a team manager for a large call center, in both outgoing and incoming. She has also held her property managers license working for several large apartment communities, and then as accounts receivables for a large pest control company. All of her experience has been very valuable for both our personal finances and getting started in renting out our property.

@stephenmasek I have a ranch house built in 1965 with all popcorn ceilings. They look pretty new and very white. Maybe they were painted? Either way, am I best to put 1/4" over it and re mud and tape and just not disturb it?

My FHA loan on my first house, the PMI goes away only after I have been paying for at least 5 years AND I am under the 80%. I have to hit both, but when I do they are supposed to automatically cut the payments to PMI. I won't hit the 80% with the regular payments until like 7 years, so when I hit 5 years I'll probably make a large payment just to get rid of it as soon as possible.

new FHAs with 3.5% down, you can never get rid of PMI without refinancing.

if you want the quality of plywood cabinets, with a little more customization you might check out cabinotch.com . They are face frame cabinets that you can build and price online and have shopped to you, and you put them together. They use a proprietary design where all of the parts slide together like a puzzle. They are very strong. You can get doors and drawer fronts from someone locally, or there are plenty of major companies as well. Semihandmadedoors.com is one I heard of recently that makes custom doors for ikea cabinets.

It is a little more complicated than just plywood vs 'pressed wood'. First you really need to determine what type of cabinet style you want. If you are going with a euro or frameless type cabinet (think ikea) chances are they will be particle board core with melamine or laminate faces. There is nothing with this for the most part, especially if the parts are at least 5/8" thick. Where you will run into problems is if the particle board is exposed and rests on the floor or anywhere it can wick up moisture easily it will expand and eventually fall apart. This will be a problem with plywood too, although much lease pronounced, it will warp from moistuure as well.

most residential kitchens in my area tend to be cheap face frame type cabinets like you find at lowes, with 1/2" plywood sides and bottoms, with hardwood face frame members and wood doors and drawers fronts. Sometimes they may have particle board sides with melamine faces to looked like plywood. There was a post recently on the forums of someone whose tenant left a hole in the side of their rental's cabinet and it was particle board. Had it been plywood this would have been hard to do that type of damage.

I am building cabinets for my kitchen now and I am using 3/4" prefinished uv maple plywood and I'm making poplar shaker style doors with mdf flat panels. I could have easily gone with particle board melamine, and all mdf doors, but the plywood will be more durable, and less prone to moisture problems, and the hardwood doors will handle wear and tear of my toddler as well.

I also am an engineer for a cabinet shop so I can design, program, and cut my on cabinets on a cnc, so I'm a little biased and have a few more choices than most. 

In the end, it's more about th e look and market you are going for.

Bed bugs is not something to take lightly. If they get into any furniture, you are better of throwing it out. My wife was a property manager at a large complex that got them, and the tenants would put their furniture out at the street for other people to claim if they wanted, and they would go around a spray paint the furniture to kept other tenants from taking and spreading the bed bugs. 

You need to pay a professional to come in and confirm the presence of them, and then to treat accordingly. Both units. Those tenants could very easily take the bed bugs with them to wherever else they may be staying in he mean time too, so talk to whoever you get to treat about how to prevent that.

Personally, I wouldn't move based on the difference in markets alone. I went to school in the upstate and always dreamed of settling in Greenville. Ended up moving to Charleston after graduation for work and spent 4 years there. I moved to Columbia last year for a new job but we still own a rental home in Summerville and have family living there. We have a great tenant and our house cash flows pretty well, and we bought is as a personal residence initially.

Rents have risen from what I'm seeing in the Summerville and North Charleston area and industry is booming with Boeing, Bosch, and many other large companies in town now. I would look in Summerville, Goose Creek areas. They are growing a lot, especially with Next on development moving in.

Pretty much every area now uses the IBC or international building code. You just have to find out which version your local district is using currently and you can buy the book (you want the commentary) online. Look up you county's building permit website and you should be able to call and find out. For residential you will want the residential code.

you need to define your screening requirements for tenants. Usually 3x monthly rent in income, but also what type of credit do you want to require? Come up with an application. We used mysmartmove.com which was great. Because the applicant can go on the website and they put in all of their personal information themselves. They pay for the service themselves. And it sends you their full credit report along with a recommendation of whether to rent to them or not based on what was found. 

We also had our applicants fill out paper applications to keep on file with rental references we could call.

You can usually pick up paper applications and sample leases applicable to your jurisdiction at staples or office depot. I would recommend going online and printing out your local landlord tenant act and reading through it to make sure you don't miss anything. And then you can actually create a customized lease online with lawdepot.com and put in special contingencies you want to include.

Good luck!

 Thanks David. Yeah replacing the vanity would be easy for me, I'm an engineer for a cabinet company by day. I'm thinking if I go this route I would just bust out all of the tile and start fresh.