I work for a large professional painting company now but am eager to getting back to doing what I do best, and that's running service companies.

Pretty sure BP offers a service?

When you get out of the service, take your degree, your HUGE savings at this point, your family and settle somewhere.

Handle the maintenance, cleanings, and on island support for others.

What service would you recommend to run your credit/background checks? 

@Zachary Miller individual investors are now able to use a service like Show Mojo or Tenant Turner that can help you with the leasing process, scheduling, and marketing out to the 20-30 sites you want to me on.

Be sure to vacuum out your kitchen drawers and shelves for tell tale signs of mice during deep cleaning of your unit. 

Storing information on External hard drives or USB sticks can also be unsafe..I agree with a lot of what you said Nancy but storing your information on your desktop rather than the "Cloud" is not necessary "safer", it might be a false sense of security..It is important when using Quickbooks online, iCloud or any Cloud type service that the user is following best practices.

Painting Serviceable Cabinets as opposed to New Cabinets. 5.

If the tenant is friendly, works with your listing agent for showings and is clean and neat and their place is tastefully decorated then its worth trying to sell when you have a tenant in place.