Hi All,
(I am double posting, sorry if that is a no-no. I wasn't sure what section the posted belonged to.) 
I am new to the forum. Been stalking and reading for awhile and decided to sign up. I am on a mission to rebuild my credit in order to purchase the house I already live in. I will list my details below and any advice will be GREATLY appreciated.
Ok here I go...
Credit One bank (opened 2 yrs ago) CL is 1900.
Discover IT (opened 5 months ago) CL $2200. Asked for increase and denied (surprise surprise)
Macys Red Card (opened last week) was denied for Amex version. CL $200 (groan)
Lowes Card (I am authorized user only) opened 10yrs and credit line was $6000. Asked for CL today and approved $17k (woohoo for my mom since she is the main owner) there is a balance of $892 on this card.
Ok the bad...
(4) Portfolio Recovery Collections accounts opened in 2015. They are paidoff and am preparing the goodwill letters to be sent out (wish me luck).
Chapter 7 bankruptcy filed in 2009 and will be ready to come off in 8 months.
Fico Scores (Exp-624) (Equ-640) (Trans-628) pulled from the Experian website (not sure if accurate and I don't trust Credit Karma) Util is 8%
So my question is... How do I improve my scores from here? I have no open installments, do I need one? Do I need more cards?
I would say you are good with the number of cards you have beyond 3 cards you don't get a good score bump for opening the account.
For optimum scoring I'd look into the AZEO method which is where all of your cards are reporting a $0 balance and one card is reporting 8.90% or less.
From there you would want an installment loan to get the credit mix scoring up. I would look into seeing if a local credit union offers an SSL that has no payment penalty and pushes the due date out, but those are getting harder to find. Could always go with something like Self Lender as that is a soft pull approval and will count as an installment.
Then I would start working on any baddies you have left with a good will campaign asking the OC for removal out of good will on their part.
Thanks jgdev for replying. I have been looking into self lender. I first heard about it here in this forum. This site is very helpful and I'm glad I found it. My good will letters were just placed in the mail today. So we shall see. Thanks for your advice. 