At 10:00 a.m. on Friday, January 29, 2010, Jeremy and I absolutely, officially, once and for all became homeowners for the very first time. Cue a situation much like this:

Courtesy of xkcd.com

Yeah, anyway, the calls from the solicitor and estate agent saying that we had “completed” came much earlier than expected on Friday, so we gave the sellers a few hours to finish moving out, and then after grabbing lunch, Jeremy and I swung by the estate agent to pick up the keys and we hiked up the hill to our new home.

Our first viewing of the place on our own, as owners, was pretty much like I expected it to be for me: a mixture of excitement, curiosity and trepidation bordering on terror. Without the benefit of furniture or an estate agent for distraction, it was easy to hone in on flaws: an ill-fitting door, a sloping floor, a damaged skirting board. And, naturally, my memory of certain things had become distorted since October, when we first (and last) saw the flat; the entryway stairs are longer and steeper than I remembered, the hallway tinier, the bathroom smaller.

But these things were to be expected, and the flaws can be remedied. And my memory played tricks in the other direction as well: Though the garden was somewhat shorter than I thought (and the sellers took their lovely Japanese maple with them, boo), the decked area was bigger—certainly big enough for a nice table and chairs and a decent-sized grill or even chiminea. The fireplace surround in the lounge is really lovely. And, best of all, the kitchen still kicks butt.

I am prepared for the fact, however, that it’s going to take a bit for the new house to really become a home. Even once we get our stuff moved in, it will feel like we’re living a stranger’s flat for a while. When we moved into our current flat, even though it was just one street away from the flat we had been in, it felt like a different world, and to be honest, I hated it at first. That was due in part to the fact that just a few days after we moved in, Jeremy had to take off for a week to attend a conference, leaving me in this strange new place with no furniture and no friends living just upstairs. I distinctly remember coming back from shopping one day and desperately wishing I could keep walking past our new street, back to our old street and our old flat, as run down and cramped as it was. That was home, and the new place wasn’t.

The change is much bigger this time around, not just because we own the place we’ll be living in, but because we’re moving to a completely different part of town which neither of us is familiar with. That’s exciting, since there will be lots to explore—and in fact, I already know that there’s an outstanding butcher and excellent wine shop very nearby, not to mention two highly-regarded pubs. But it will also be very strange to leave the center of town and walk in completely the opposite direction from what we’re used to in order to get home. Being the creature of habit that I am, I know that this will unsettle me for a good while.

But maybe just being aware of that will make it easier to deal with. It helped, too, that the sellers left a card for us in the flat welcoming us to our new home, along with an explanation of where the instructions were for all the appliances (very useful), a few leaflets about recycling collection days, and a flyer for take-out pizza. That personal touch made the place seem marginally less strange and intimidating. They also left the flat spotlessly clean; in fact, it’ll probably never be that clean again. So now all that’s left for us to do is fill the place with our familiar clutter and make a house a home.