It shouldn't be too long, but it can vary greatly. VPS accounts can take longer than shared hosting to set up. It should be within 24 hours, but I have heard some companies who still set them up by hand can take up to 72 hours, but I doubt it will be that long. Congrats on getting a host! I always suggest commercial hosting versus doing it yourself at home due to the massive security issues, bandwidth bottlenecks (particularly upload speeds, the most important for hosting), knowledge needed to set everything up, dynamic IP issues, etc. It can really be a headache, and I would gladly pay a few bucks a month to not worry about all that!
