Like Rob, I could fill pages with the purchase of the house that I am living in now...and will likely remain in until they carry me off in a pine box...

...but you asked for house hunting stories. Most of mine are stories of regret.

Regret #1: I was offered a chance to buy the house we were living in for $54K. At the time we'd just moved to Colorado, I didn't think I could afford it since my ex-wife refused to work, and the passive solar system didn't work so well when we didn't see the sun for a week that Winter. The electric bill was equivalent to a mortgage payment, and we were forced to move into an apartment. 16 years later, that house has been mildly remodeled and is worth about $350K.

Regret #2: Living in the apartment was a real pain: Bad neighbors, no workspace for me, a tiny living space and another pregnancy made me finally take some action on the insistent nagging by my ex to buy a house. We discussed it, looked over our finances and figured that she would have to find a job and pay a portion of the mortgage for us to be able to afford it. She agreed. The regret was not getting it on paper: I never saw her paychecks.

As a first-time home buyer, a carpenter and the only real source of income for our family, I had to find something cheap, preferably a fixer-upper. We hooked up with a good friend of ours that is a realtor, and after giving her our parameters, spent many an evening looking at some pretty abysmal attempts at homebuilding....but at least were within our price range.

Regret #3: We found one downtown on three city lots. The house was an adequate size, was on the end of a quiet street, and I saw great potential there for expansion and sweat equity. Tragic flaw: The house had some serious mechanical issues and two additions that were literally falling off the main house. No lender would give us a mortgage on a house that was in essence condemned and unable to be occupied. We passed. The house has now been remodeled (much more poorly than I would've done) and is worth about five times what the asking price was.

As you can probably guess, I was pretty leery at that point and looked at nearly everything with a discerning professional eye. Reaching the end of her list, our realtor took us to a log home very near where I live now. The house was listed by another realtor friend of hers, and was on a nice corner lot. Driving up to it, it looked great, had a separate shop building out to the side, and was already a decent size with a large enough lot to expand it further.

Upon inspecting the house, I found the following issues:

-The stairs right inside the front door were steeper than building code allows. At the top, right in the middle of the landing was a structural post. I envisioned myself going to bed at night, running into the post and falling backwards down the steep stairs...and right through the front window into the yard. No way to fix either without some serious demolition and reconstruction.

-The water heater sat in the middle of the kitchen, fully exposed. The kitchen cabinets looked like a 7th grade shop project (a 'C' at best, only if it was an attempt at "rustic") and by the sulfur smell could tell that the well had been sunk in a coal bed. Major remodeling needed, and tough to live there with no water or kitchen until the work was finished.

-For some reason, six feet of the foundation had never been poured. The logs had sagged into the gap and would need to be shored and jacked up (two stories of logs above it) and a new footer poured to repair it...if a lender would even give us a mortgage.

-The gaps between the logs appeared to be *****ed and smoothed out with a golf shoe. I could see daylight through at least a dozen gaps, and the only way to be sure of a seal would be to re***** the entire house.

-The interior layout had some issues. For instance, to reach the adjoining bathroom, you had to go through one of the upstairs bedrooms. If you left the downstairs hall closet door ajar, it would trap someone in the bathroom.

After looking the place over I decided it would be way too much work to fix all the issues. My realtor called and asked how the tour was, and I told her we were going to pass and why.

A few days later she called again and said that the realtor that had originally listed the house had called her and asked if we were interested. She explained that the serious structural issues were too much for us to take on. He apparently spluttered, got quite upset and said,"Structural issues??? I built that house myself!".

Yeah, that explains a lot.