The exterior was painted when we bought it, we refinished the floors, added carpet, new paint inside, refinished the kitchen cabinets, replaced a couple windows and did some minor plumbing work inside (along with getting rid of TONS of junk throughout the inside and outside of the home!)

Hell, having laminate is better than having carpet carpet imo (assuming good quality of course).

It's too messy.

You should really have hard floors instead of carpet but if the carpet has a few years left you can change them with the tenant moves out.

You need to do more than a day of fixups - painting, carpet steam cleaned, cleaning all drawers and appliances, exterior touchups.You have a "perfect" process set out, but it's one that will push you to make a bad tenant decision and not vet them properly.

After the current tenants move out, I need to replace the carpet and pad. 

Now using the de minimis/routine maintenance safe harbors instead of bonus depreciation for appliances, carpet and the like.

For example, on what I thought was a relatively simple project in a bathroom reno which was fully gutted down to the studs already, I had more than one quote for over $7k to run pex supply lines and rough in a shower drain and toilet drain off of an existing main stack, all of which ended up costing me about $200 in pex lines, PVC fittings, and sawzall blades.If you need any hardwood flooring repaired, patched, or refinished, you can't beat Dave's Hardwood Flooring out of Blaine - $3k spent with them fully brought one of my duplex unit's original 100+ year old maple floors back to life.If you're putting in any stone counters in your kitchens or for bathroom vanities, Twin City Discount Granite have been awesome to work with, and consistently have the best pricing I've found in the area on fully installed granite and quartz.I also have a great drywall guy, as well as a really good carpet install guy - feel free to DM me if you want either of their contact info!

I’m fairly new to the self-managing/property management business and certainly new to dealing with section 8 tenants.I have a potential section 8 tenant who has inquired about one of my properties and they are in their opinion “disgusted” with the way the carpet looks however up until this point in my efforts of marketing the property I have not had one complaint concerning the carpet.That being said she has requested to rip out the carpet, in turn to replace the carpet with hardwood floors. 

I've heard tales from landlords whose inspections failed due to a pulled thread in a carpet now being a "trip hazard".No thanks.