2 Bit Hacker

With the new year and my lease running out at the end of next month, I’ve started seriously looking for a new place to live. I’m hoping to find a townhouse style condo or a small house in the Manchester/Merrimack area. Over the weekend, Delia and I went on our first set of showings. We ended up seeing 4 locations, 2 of them we weren’t too keen on, one we like, but it needs a lot of work, and another that’s brand new in downtown Manch, but kindof small.

We started off in Merrimack looking at this place. I’ve noticed it in listings for a while, and the size and location seem really nice, but the listing does say “needs cosmetics tlc”, which is a bit of an understatement. This first thing we noticed when coming in the door was that a chunk of wall had been removed. This was pretty typical, as there were numerous small holes in the walls all over the building. Not really sure what was going on there. It is huge though, good sized basement with the beginnings of a bar, first floor has living room, dining room, kitchen. Two good sized bedrooms on the second floor, then a huge loft-type area on the 3rd floor, which I think would make a great computer/gaming room. It’s also in a pretty good location in Merrimack, about halfway between my work and Delia’s office.

Next we went to a garden style condo in Manchester, off of South Willow street (near the mall). It was very nice, very good condition, great floors, but I think it’s a little small for what we want. It’s not really much bigger than the apartment I’m in now, but it does have it’s own laundry room. I think it’s staying on the “maybe” pile. From there we went to another townhouse nearby. This one has some water damage to the upstairs bathroom that caused a part of the ceiling in the dining room to sag. It’s probably not a big deal to fix, but it didn’t help the overall place much. It would need some paint, as a few of the walls were a little too pink for my liking, but it had a “half-finished” basement, which could make a good computer area.

The last place we looked at was the brand new townhouse in Manchester, a couple blocks away from the Verizon Wireless Arena. It’s got an unfinished basement, a first floor with a small dining room, small kitchen, and a decent sized living room, and a second floor with 2 bedrooms and a bathroom with washer/dryer hookups. I really liked it, and I think it would be great if we finished off the basement to make a comp/game room. Until that happens though, we’d probably use the second bedroom as an office, which means we couldn’t get a roommate for a bit. I think we’re going to request some more info on this one.

So, that how things are going so far in the new year. I need to get on the phone with the money people again to get that ball rolling as well. Hopefully we’ll be in good shape to move into a place of our (my) own in the near future. Then we can start having people over again, yay!

Personal house