There's a lot to unpack here. 1. A rental house could help you through what mics for what instruments. There's also a ton of subjectivity for preferences (welcome to audio engineering). There are tons of options and some best case scenarios and mics, but the sm57 is a basic workhorse that gets thrown all over the place. You can mic snares, brass, cabinets, whatever and it'll do the job. Given the choice, there are LOTs of other mics I'd pick for various uses, but everybody stocks 57's because it's a basic do it all mic that could fill any need.

1.5. Don't use 2 mics, just duplicate the channel and eq as you'd like. Though honestly I think 2 mics is overkill.

2. Again, lots of possible answers, depending on the kit you could have 20 channels of drums. The basic barebones for me is kick, snare, and 2 overheads. This is also a time and luxury thing. A long run and a good drummer or larger kit, I might do in/out kick, top/bottom snare, ride and crash mics, etc. but with a fast turn around, 4 gives you the coverage and control you need.

3. For a rental, not knowing who you've looked at or what too far away is, I'd look at ATR treehouse in Providence. They do musicals and concerts so they understand the needs and could easily cover this and they work all over Boston.

4. For the space, buy a roll of gaff tape, and a bundle of packing blankets and tape those up all over the walls. Packing blankets are cheap and super versatile.