Florida, the shortsales seem to be a piece of cake.

Many sellers try to have the cake and eat it too.

Refinishing the cabinets with a little DIY sweat was definitely the way to go ... champagne looks on a budweiser budget :) Also totally agree with your philosophy to DIY the small jobs now so you can better manage contractors on the bigger jobs tomorrow ... this is the only way to develop those "Spidey senses" in foreseeing contractor issues around estimates, quality of work, etc.I agree that a backsplash would be icing on the cake.

Unless of course I had worked from that space it would have been cake.. but I did not.

He's not a bad guy but I kinda feel like it was my cake and he just wants a bite.

Now that that's out of the way, your next deals should be a piece of cake, right?

Research the battles in the cities of Anaheim and Newport Beach for more insight. 

This would be a piece of cake if these 3rd party software vendors could provide a transaction dump into Excel or QBO but they like to pretend like they have a good bookkeeping module.

From what I've read, I've been advised to plan my numbers to hit a cash flow and ROI I'm happy with and any appreciation afterwards is treated like icing on the cake.

There is one in Lake Forest, Laguna Hills, Anaheim and Irvine that are my favorites.