It’s currently setup as a large studio without a kitchen, but we plan to eventually erect a wall to create a bedroom, and install a kitchenette.My question is, knowing how persnickety Portland is with regard to Airbnb, would it be a smarter strategy to rent it out on a longer-term basis to a regular tenant?

It gave the advantage of locking down a tenant so you didn't have the worry about having to regularly re-rent the property should the tenant give notice.

My pre-approval was for regular FHA .

We live across the country so can’t do regular checks on our contractor.

Pentagon is a secure building, so I don't have easy access to cell phone or regular email.What I do is schedule time at work to do real estate. 

You Don’t need to use your own money but getting 100% financing when you have no track record is no easy hurdle.The Biggerpockets store has plenty of educational items to choose from.

If it's just regular maintenance stuff, I would pay for it.

However, I need to report that I have not done a very good job of having the meetups as regular as I should (between normal work, rehabbing my BRRRR's, but all excuses in the end). 

I would put modest appliances in possibly used from a used appliance store or craigslist.   

I wanted to ask where investors out there buy their supplies when flipping homes and if anyone uses on-line stores to purchase them.