After having our trailer on the market for about 10-11 months we finally have an offer that we are accepting. The paperwork is done and signed so its a done deal. We get the money for it on August 14th.
We are going to be temporarily moving in with my parents for a month or two while we look for a house. Unfortunately about 90% (probably more) of my collection will be boxed up until we find a new home. But the positive side is that I will finally get my own game room!!!
I'm very excited about this and will be sure to blog the set up of the new room. I think I'll do something like before/during/after pics and may also be asking you guys for help when I think I need it.
Thanks for all the positive comments last time I posted something similar to this. This time its on paper so im set though.
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Looking forward to seeing the new game room grow. 
Be sure to take some pictures during the process, that's always awesome to see.
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I agree and will do my best to update with pics a lot.
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Good luck! I can't wait to see pictures!
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YAY. Kelso, get a nice, big house so that I can come over in like 3-4 years and have an epic gaming session. I'd totally drive to BC. 
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@ logical123
We are either going to try to find a house big enough that we can see ourselves in it for 15-20 years or something with a rental suite. Either way your welcome to come have an "epic gaming session" anytime. Just let me know in advance. That goes for most of you if anyone wants to make the trip up here.
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@Crabmaster2000: Sweet, I'll bring the beer. No beer for Rob though.
Good luck with the game room, I'm just about ready to start putting my new game room together so if I have any "should have done this that way" moments, I'll let you know so you can be better prepared.
What's the housing market like up there? Around here there are so many houses for sale that most just sit empty until they fall into disrepair.
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@NES_Rules
I'd appreciate any tips or ideas you or anyone else on this forum might have. I'm going to be very interested in people opinions on color of room, shelving, carpet vs. other options and controller/hookup storage for starters.
The housing market is good for buying right now, but not as good as where your at it sounds like. Lumber is a huge industry in Prince George (thats where I am) and they have been hit huge by the Pine Beetle, Fires and the Economic slowdown so lots of houses are on the market right now, prices have gone down quite a bit from a few years ago and interest rates are still quite low. They are building some sort of expansion onto our Airport in hopes of getting more traffic coming through and thus more jobs so we want to buy before that is up and running. We'll probably be buying in the $180,000 - $200,000 range.
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@Crabmaster2000: The only thing I know about interior design is that green is supposed to be a soothing, relaxing color and brown carpet will go with just about any color wall. But in any good game room none of that matters since you won't see much of the walls anyway 
What size house/property will $180k buy you? My sister is looking to buy her second house now in that same price range, so I'm curious to see how the property values differ. Around here you can get a 3-4 bedroom, 2 bath on 1/2 acre in a nice area for about $100K. The $200K houses are generally 4 bedroom, 3 bath on at least an acre in really nice areas.
I find real estate fascinating and once I have my career going I'd like to get into on the side, buying and renting/flipping houses. So I try to watch prices now so I have a good idea what's priced good and what's not.
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@NES_Rules
We went and looked at our first houses today. Saw 5 places. Seems like our price range will probably get us around a 3-4 bedroom, 2 bath, 2 living rooms, 1-3 city lots, in average to good areas of town. The square footage on the places we saw today ranged from 2000-3000 and the age ranged from the early 70s to the mid 90s. I checked a currency converter online and it looks like 180,000 Canadian would be around 163,000 US right now.
Hope that gives you a bit of an idea of what your curious about. If you have any more questions I'd be happy to help if I can. I'll be sure to post more info when we find something we want to buy though.
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@NES_Rules: Drinking age is 19 in Canada!  
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@ logical123
Its 18 in Alberta. Also I dont drink, so if you guys are drinking you'll have to bring your own stuff and keep it in moderation
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@logical123: I didn't say you couldn't have any because of your age, I just meant you couldn't have any of my beer
@Crabmaster2000: Sounds like they're a little more on the expensive side up there than they are here. Which isn't surprising, because houses are really cheap in this part of the state compared to everywhere else. There are areas you can buy a house with 2 bedrooms for $5,000 and they're not even in bad neighborhoods.
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@NES_Rules
The sad thing is that the prices here are pretty good compared to other cities in BC and Alberta. For the same house as we are buying to get it in Edmonton or Vancouver right now is at least twice the price. And some crazy places like Fort St John or Fort McMurrey they would be 3 -5 times as pricey as here.
We looked at one that we both absolutely loved today. It had 3 large bedrooms upstairs, an ensuite in the master bedroom, an average size bathroom, great updated kitchen, decent sized living room, a huge living room downstairs, really good size windowless room (My future game room), big full bathroom downstairs, Massive fenced yard (probably 4 city lots), great area of town and had basically everything updated recently. The only thing we would have to worry about in the next 5 years in re-shingling the roof. We are going to take a second look and possibly make an offer. Its slightly over what we were hoping to pay, but since it doesnt need any work done in the near future that would even out with the price.
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UPDATE:
My wife just called after a second viewing (with some family members of ours) and we will be making an offer. She is coming down to work so I can sign some papers. Wish me Luck!!
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@Crabmaster2000: Good luck! It sounds like you've found just what you were looking for, and so quick too! Hopefully everything goes through smoothly and your collection won't be in storage for as long as you were thinking.
However, you mentioned you want to put your game room in the windowless room. I would use that as a last resort (as in, your wife won't let you put it in any other room). The reason being that sunlight is nice sometimes and will help keep your room from looking like a dungeon. And if you want it dark for gaming time, get some black out curtains. That's what I'm using in my game room and with them closed, it's like having no windows at all. But I can open them up to let some light and fresh air in when I want it.
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I'm actually planning to paint the whole game room black and was going to black out any windows. I want to see nothing but the flicker of the TV when im gaming. The other upside to the windowless room is that its in the basement, which I love. It will probably end up quite "dungeon-like" but thats part of the appeal to me. Also this particular room has a MASSIVE closet, which will be ideal for storing Guitar Hero controllers, Acrade Sticks, etc. when not in use.
I also just got the papers signed, so now we are just waiting to hear from the current owners to see if they are into our offer.
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UPDATE:
After several offers and counter offers it looks like we have come to an agreement. Tomorrow morning we will make everything official and then we'll start getting our money and home inspector all lined up and make this thing happen.
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UPDATE:
Appointments made to for Home Inspector, Insurance, Mortgage Broker
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ANOTHER UPDATE:
Insurance is good as long as home inspector doesnt find anything fishy.
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Wow it seems like you've found your house. Nice!
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SWEET!
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YET ANOTHER UPDATE:
Inspection went quite well. Nothing we werent already expecting. So we took that info back to the Insurance Broker and got those two subjects removed from the contract. We will be finalizing our finances tomorrow and thats the last subject to be removed!!!
Also we got to wander around and snoop around the house for a couple hours with the inspector. It was lots of fun and we are even more excited about this place after spending a greater amount of time in it. I also noticed in the game room there just happens to be a small alcove that would most likely fit an Arcade Cabinet or Pinball Machine!!
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UPDATE:
Financing sounds very positive. We should have a solid answer by tomorrow though so its looking like a go.
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