I'm leaning towards floating vinyl.

I'm talking about things like floating shelves, or organizers in the kitchen drawers, or things like that? 

Certain amenities will float you higher.  

This means paying off your balance (not just the minimum) in the appropriate time period (depends on card) so they're not charging your interest on a rolling balance.Based on your timeline, if you have the funds to float the rehab, I suggest doing a little at a time when you've saved enough cash to fund all the mini projects of the remodel.

Security offerings, creating a syndication, and SEC filings seems like an expensive and overly complicated route just to buy a small property and it seemed like the answers were drifting in that direction.

Given your time horizon, your lender have a floating rate product [the HELOC] tied to a fixed rate loan, which is a bad idea, never mind the fact that they could call the HELOC at anytime. 

Unfortunately, asbestos is almost invisible and when workers smash down walls the asbestos can float on dead air space for 3 to 5 days.

That back door is kinda floating in space now, so it should be fine.

It should be viewed as short term capitalPer Andy's comment, every HELOC I have seen are floating rate.  

There's also the large mortgage payment you'd need to be able to float if the property sits empty for a month or two.The advantage to the high price market is you can invest a large amount of capital in one investment which mean less maintenance/tenant management.