He would still hire all the subs etc but he would be working "for" us mutually as opposed to for himself.  

Unfortunately there is nothing on the market right now except 95% furnaces and 15 seer ACs that would provide a greater payback.I wanted to use exterior foam insulation for this project to remove the conduction heat loss through the studs to improve R value from R19 to R28, but now have second thoughts.I built my house from SIPs, and did some other creative things to bit the code by 270%, but doubt that anybody would pay me more than 50K, even though I spent over 150k on these energy efficient improvements.This is a picture of the house that I built, had over 5000 people touring through it during Parade of Homes in 2013

Her house was built in 1955 , CB STUCCO .The exterior wall.  

A lot of times the HOA's have deferred exterior maintenance which is a non-starter for me.I'm not saying it's easy, but I don't think it's as impossible as many BP newbies make it out to be.  

There are many homes in the market from which you can get an idea to add bits and pieces of design and style to the exterior theme of your house.

So here's what we ended up doing- The before and after pics will help paint a better picture of the transformation:Property: 155k  and 1600 sqft. in Washington County, OregonFinancing: Hard Money (estd. interest only monthly payments of 1.6k)Fix-up Budget Estimate 23k (before purchase - our plan was to do a lot of the rehab ourselves and save money): Roof-16k, Painting (Interior+Exterior)-1k, Electrical-1.5k, Flooring (Carpeting+Refinish Hardwood Flooring)-1k, Bathroom-0.5k, Misc. 

.- Next day, boom, crash, property value drops to 50K (50% of what you bought it for); you owe 160K to the lender however.This is obviously a less than great situation to be in and you're definitely minus equity (as opposed to the 20% that the lender wants) - but, what is the lender going to do - demand you pay up and come back to 20% based on the new assessed value and foreclose on you if you do not?

Aah okay, so you believe that is an informative option for one who is particularly interested in learning methods of real estate 'investing' as opposed to learning to be a real estate agent?  

This is what I see.... the outside joists (the joists perpendicular to the exterior wall) are supporting the entire load of the deck.

They think that I should take out a higher insurance premium instead to protect myself, as opposed to making them remove the trampoline.