You educated yourself, rebuilt what you were doing, and are cooking now.

I love to design things and see a beautiful finished project.  

I know that I'll have to wait a little while to be able to get traditional financing.I was thinking I could do an owner occupy deal and live there for another 1-2 years (1 year to finish my lease then present my landlord with my proposal, if she accepts, live there for another year to fulfill owner-occupy terms, and be at my job long enough to get traditional financing.) 

For ease of cooking, have sufficient counter space on both sides of a range.

We have our current home that we live in it for sale, we just finished the rehab on it.

@Lindsey Cook Sending now!

We just finished a dance with CIBC (BTW: They introduce additional scrutiny once you have 6+ {residential} mortgages and have {ridiculous IMHO} liquidity requirements once you have 10+ {residential} mortgages) where they would not include revenue from our 5+ unit properties in their DCR, GDS, TDS consideration ... despite the fact that our 5-unit is financed by RBC with a residential mortgage.

I'm doing something similar right now, but using them for rehabbing and planning to do a cash-out refi when finished.

Well, I started reading it right out of college, but never got past about the first chapter or two (wish I had finished it then!).

I go with nice durable higher end fixtures and finishes and apply my OCD to the standard of finish.