A year ago today, we received the keys for our new home.*

I’d been in tears the day of the exchange, certain the whole deal was about to fall apart. Our solicitor, consistently useless throughout, trumped himself by faxing important documents to the wrong number within the mortgage company and not checking whether they’d been received. 

(Heads up if you are in the Brighton area do not work with Neil Hayes of Taylor Rose, unless you want your property deal to crash and burn.)

Finally, we had the keys to our new house.

I remember feeling so nervous as we turned the keys in the door, that all I would feel was regret. 

House buying in England is such an odd process. You are spending the most money you will ever spend on something – that you’ve viewed twice for about 30 minutes in total.

You have to love the property enough to make an offer on it. Yet also hold it lightly, because until you complete the house purchase months later – it could all fall through.

We had been longing to move for years. Building a picture of what our dream house would look like. That over time got increasingly elaborate and fantastical. As we are both self employed it took years for our finances to be healthy enough to apply for a mortgage.

Which happened to be the week Liz Truss decided to crash the UK economy. Truly epic timing!

Options were limited. People weren’t putting their houses on the market unless they had to. We also wanted our house to be accessible for my younger sister who is in a wheelchair. Which in hilly historic Brighton & Hove ruled out a lot of properties with a narrow entrance or up flights of stairs.

The house was the sixth house we viewed. A white late Victorian house close to the sea. It had, to borrow from a poem I love, ‘good bones. This place could be beautiful right? You could make this place beautiful.’

We put in an offer and finally after five months of surveys and contracts – it was ours.

After putting in the offer I had cold feet. What if I’d been wrong? What if this was a very expensive mistake? What if the first time we got the keys and I walked inside I felt like somebody had dumped ice cold water over me?

Sometimes love hits you like a bolt, instantaneous and life changing. It has rarely been like that for me. Other times, it’s a slow growing love that develops over time.

I love our house.

I love the way light floods through the stained glass front door in the evening.

I love to lie on the sofa in the kitchen diner staring up at the changing sky.

I love that the ground floor is accessible for when my sister comes to visit.

I love the wisteria over the back door and the surprise of seeing what springs up in the garden.

I love that when the wind blows in the right direction, the house fills with the brackish reek of the sea.

I love walking around my new neighbourhood and buying fruit and veg at the ridiculously overpriced green grocers.

Mostly I love that the sea is at the end of our road. That going for a swim is as easy as popping my costume on.

After years of renting, I knew I would feel different when we bought our own place. But what surprised me was how big of a difference this has made.

When you rent, there is always the possibility that the landlord will suddenly give you notice. You have little control over your environment, whether it’s as simple as the colour of the walls or as complex as fixing that damp problem.

If there is a continuum between safety and freedom, I am firmly at the safety end. HWSNBN unsurprisingly is the opposite. I like certainty. I thrive on routines. I hate surprises.

So it shouldn’t surprise me how different I feel now we own the house we live in. I feel more centred and deeply rooted. I like imagining how we will change our use of the space over time. I have planted climbing roses knowing I will be here long enough to see them. That this must be the place. That if I am lucky, this is the house my children will grow up in.

The existentialists always talk about choices. How when we chose one door, others swing closed. And there is something about entering mid-life that makes you realise in a very visceral way, that because you have chosen certain things other doors are closed for you now. Because I chose my husband, I closed off the other romantic possibilities that were open for me. I chose one career and that meant the time and opportunities to pursue other careers faded.

I chose this house and I am 99% happy with that choice. But there is the realisation that I am not going to raise my children in another country, or live communally, but here in this quiet street in this rainbow city by the sea. 

Moving into this house didn’t transform me into a magically different person. (Sadly). I am still somebody who can spend years dreaming about doing something, rather than picking up a paintbrush and doing it. 

I underestimated both my motivation for making changes (missing). 

My level of DIY skill (non-existent).

And also how much things actually cost (‘you don’t really need that second kidney- do you?’). 

There is stuff we need to do to the house (the roof). And stuff we want to do to the house (the attic), if we ever have enough money.

Just as with everything, there will probably always be niggly things that annoy me about the house. That in a perfect world I would fix with a snap of my fingers. But we don’t live in a perfect world.

The real test is this.

A month after moving we went on holiday. Driving back from the airport, up to the blue front door, the sea glistening at the end of the road – I felt so happy to return home.

*Footnote. 

We are so lucky and so privileged in this economic climate to buy a house. I do not ever take it for granted. And I really do not want this post to read as ‘there’s a fly in my champagne.’ 

I was and am so grateful that we were able to buy our own house. 

People had told me that it was stressful. And it was. 

People had told me it would be a dream come true. And it was.

And yet like most dreams made flesh, the reality was more complicated than I anticipated.

What I hadn’t heard other people talk about was the doubt as we questioned: ‘if we were making the right choice?’ Often when we talk about the big life changing decisions: it is with the benefit of hindsight. When we look back the path is clear and easy, whitewashed by hindsight.

But in my experience, the big life moments are often more ambivalent, confused and yes better in their beautiful complexity than I could ever imagine.

Has a big milestone hit differently than you imagined? Am I the only one to get cold feet in the process of buying a house? Let me know what your experience has been in the comments?