You need to ensure the work is done professionally to maintain a safe living space.

Columbus is also generally a pretty safe area and if you build good relationships with a realtor, contractor, property manager, and attorney you should be pretty safe!

Hey everyone, I own a SFH in Buda, TX (close to I35 near South Austin) in a vibrant and safe neighborhood.

But beyond that we used many techniques that nowadays are either seldom used or totally misused by the undercapitalized, poorly educated and totally naive disciples of irresponsible “gurus”. 

Contractors should do this, but to be safe, I would outline it in the contract. 6.

While I agree with your friend that full guts are almost the only way to find yield in "safe" areas, it is all just moving risk around.  

I still don’t have a lab test confirming that the water is safe.

:)now, here's something... when we bought our house 13 yrs ago i knew nothing about remodeling. so when taking the wall paper off on one wall, 4 layers of wallpaper came off and some of the plaster. had no idea how to patch it, so we bought a bhear texture paint in a can that you apply with a special roller. and then we painted on top, so the bumps are smooth.so now, we have one accent wall in the house that's texture and everyone that walks in thinks it looks like art because we added some shapes that do not have the texture. even plasterers have commented on stealing that technique.. :)

It's probably safe to assume it will take thousands of dials to get a yes.

But I would invest in perfectly safe investments like Treasury bills, or money market accounts, or a bank high yield savings account.