Big changes are afoot Chez J+J! If everything goes to plan, the current Chez J+J will be moving to a new location in the very near future, a location which we can call our very own. Well, the location will be ours and the bank’s—yes, Jeremy and I are in the process of buying a flat.

Truth be told, we’ve been in the process of buying a flat for several months now. I haven’t mentioned it until now mostly because, for a long time, nothing really happened with it. We kind of made the decision to buy someplace in the early summer and then spent several months on and off looking at a succession of depressing, overpriced flats with drafty windows, non-existent kitchens and no storage space.

The highlight—and, as it turned out, lowlight—was an intriguing, very modern flat in a big converted Victorian building in the center of town. It was the first place we both liked enough to put an offer in on, but I don’t think either one of us realized quite how attached we were to it until someone outbid us on it (actually, they didn’t outbid us, they put in the exact same offer—they just did it faster than we did). That kind of put a damper on our enthusiasm for the whole thing, but we soldiered on in the hopes of finding someplace else equally good, or even better.

What we eventually found isn’t especially remarkable, but when we walked into it for the first time, it immediately felt like it could be home. It’s a small two-bedroom flat in good condition with a nice kitchen and no upstairs neighbors, and it’s got a benefit I hadn’t even hoped for: a little private garden out back, with nice decking and plenty of space for big pots of herbs.

Once our offer was accepted on the flat, the biggest hurdle standing between us and homeownership was the mortgage. Now, Jeremy and I don’t always make for particularly good grown-ups. Our inability to do the things most adults do (drive cars, put up shelves, understand mortgages) is matched only by our general lack of interest in doing these things. But I found that I developed an interest in mortgages pretty darn quickly when it was our money—and our future—on the line.

What (minimal) property knowledge I’ve gained over the past months has taught me two main things: don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched, and don’t be self-employed if you want to get a mortgage quickly in the “current economic climate.” I think for “normal” people—i.e., those with regular jobs who go into an office every day and receive a paycheck from an employer every month—the mortgage process is pretty straightforward. For us self-employed freaks, however…not so much.

I’ve spent the past six weeks trying to convince our would-be mortgage lender that I am worthy of their money. I understand the need for lenders to be careful, but the hoops I’ve had to jump through have been Kafkaesque at best and utterly, ridiculously insulting at worst. Every single week since the end of October I have expected to hear that our mortgage application has been approved, and ever single week I have instead had to send in another calculation, request another form from Inland Revenue, or write another letter explaining my situation.

By last week, I had basically given up hope. I figured our application would be rejected or delayed so long that the sale would fall through, and we’d be back at square one—or someplace even further back than square one, since we’ve already spent hundreds of pounds on solicitor’s fees and the like. I was told to expect a call today about the status of the mortgage, and I struggled all weekend to not think about it because when I did think about it I felt sick. And when the phone rang this morning, my stomach flip-flopped, and I answered the call with a sense of dread…only to hear that the mortgage had finally been approved and we were on our way.

Obviously, it’s not over yet. In some ways, the hard work really starts now, because now we have to start thinking about actually moving instead of just thinking about thinking about actually moving. A million things could still go wrong, and we’re not counting our chickens just yet, but I think Jeremy and I are almost at the point where we can stop talking about “the place we want to buy” or “the place we hope to move into” and start talking about “the place we are buying” or “the place we are moving into.” Almost.