Location fairly close to dining, shopping etc.  

I chuckle to myself every time I am sitting at the dining room table signing a contract, looking at a stack of postcards.

I re-grouted the entire second floor (kitchen/living/dining area) which ended up being very time consuming and labor-intensive.

There was a dining room that we ended up building in to a fourth bedroom due to the size of the kitchen.

What and where:From what I've learned so far and in considering a house a "liability" I find house hacking to be an elegant way to offset the liability of home ownership.

Andrews method is different than mine, and after suspiciously examining it I think it MIGHT be better than mine...although not as elegant 😉😉Hope this helps.

We finished the upstairs - adding 3 bedrooms and a full bathroom and renovated the kitchen and bath on the main level and opening up a few walls to what had been one of the first floor bedrooms and making it into a dining room. 

We probably had 8 of them pass up our flip for that reason & some of the older couples who were 'downsizing' baled on not being able to fit a 12 seater dining room in the open living area.

Consider that you have to be able to fit a dining room table/chairs in there too.Without seeing it or knowing measurements, it's hard to speculate.  3 bedrooms are better than 2, but not if you don't have any room to turn around outside of your bedrooms. 

Our budget for the entire project is about $35k to $40k and it already will need new roof, HVAC, floors, kitchen, bathroom, and we had hoped to open of the floor plan by removing the walls between the living, kitchen, and dining room.