My goal is to have options till my husband is ready to permanently retire. 

Oh that's right, SOLOK or SEP retirement plans.

For funding your rehab project you could do some or all of the following: use your personal cash reserves, cash out from a refinance, equity access from a HELOC, construction loans (probably not enough value there for a lender), personal lines of credit, credit cards, money from retirement investment accounts, private money, hard money, or if your lucky maybe your PM company will flip the bill and you just pay them back from rent checks.

Since I will be retiring within the next 2-3 years I am looking forward to being able to do this fulltime, but as of now I will start on a part-time basis. 

I have a seven year old, so she'd be attending elementary, middle and high school (I'm retiring and planning on sticking around.)  

Then, you find one other person to Fund (which could be a person, a retirement fund, a bank, a hard money lender, etc) and you've got the ingredients to a great partnered deal!

I'm looking at a single level, modest home marketing to the retirement age community in the $180,000 to $220,000 range.  

I'm a do-it-yourself home rehabber on properties I've owned that started as a hobby because I couldn't afford to hire a contractor.I don't think of myself as R/E Investor (more of a tradesman working like a hobby), wanting to learn more about the investor strategies to build up my retirement fund.Cheers :-)

I also have a sister, retired, who had a career in new home sales here in the San Diego area. 

Its a great place to learn how to build a cash flow way of life to retire in comfort!