So at the end June my housemate was like "Hey, it's about time you found a place of your own" and with that I started going on the hunt for a house. I finally put the nail in the proverbial coffin on Friday and closed on my first house, a 1500 sq./ft. bi-level. Even though it's just me, the garage is packed like a sardine can with a bazillion tubs containing my game collection and a f-ton of boxes for my comics. I had my now ex-housemate, my cousin and a buddy from work helping move all that on Saturday to which I was told "There's a special place in hell for collectors like you."
The upside is the housemate's wife had an aunt/uncle who were also moving and they had some older but well-maintained furniture they were parting with (for free) including a sectional couch, two recliners, and a still-in-plastic king size mattress set. That's a cool $2K in furniture I don't have to buy now.
Since the house doesn't have a true basement, it's a little smaller than where I've been staying now. My friend's house is approximately the same size at 1500 square feet but as I learned while house hunting, unfinished basements don't count toward that number so his house is actually much bigger than mine when counting the amount of basement space he has. Not the end of the world but I won't be displaying as much of my collection like I had hoped to.
At some point I'm going to have to rip all of the carpet out of the house as the previous owners were smokers. I would prefer to have that Pergo/paneled flooring or whatever it's called anyway but that's a down the road project behind a few other sweat equity things I'm going to have to tackle.
I'll be honest in that I wasn't really looking forward to this whole ordeal but at least the house-hunting and dealings with banks/realtor processes are over. The mortgage payment and utilities won't break my budget but the thing I'm NOT looking forward to is maintaining the lawn/weeding.
That said, I'll deal with it rather than have to put up with a condo's HOA telling me I can't have certain colored curtains or charging me for maintenance fees for a tennis court/pool I'll never use.
Anywho...let the fun begin!