For months, our focus had been singular. Find the right property, work out who to talk to, arrange the finances, complete the purchase, move our belongings and don't loose too much sleep... Everything revolved around reaching that point. And then one day, almost unexpectedly, we did. The contracts were signed, the keys were handed over and the monastery was officially ours.

After all the anticipation, we expected a sense of certainty. Instead, our first thought was something closer to:

"Well, we're here. Now what?"

It's a strange feeling standing inside a building that you've spent so long imagining. For months we'd studied photographs, floor plans and survey reports. We'd discussed ideas, possibilities and plans. We knew the property well on paper, but standing inside it as owners felt completely different and the reality of the scale quickly becomes apparent.

There are rooms filled with decades of accumulated belongings. Buildings we haven't fully explored. Land that needs understanding. Practical jobs that demand immediate attention (looking at you leaky roof) and larger questions that will take years to answer.

The temptation is to rush in to start clearing, fixing, changing, but one thing we've learned already is that old buildings rarely reward impatience. Every room seems to contain a clue about how the monastery has evolved over time. Different materials. Altered openings. Evidence of repairs carried out by previous owners. Details that would be easy to miss if the sole focus was getting started as quickly as possible.

So our first objective isn't restoration, it's understanding. That means cleaning - a lot of cleaning. Opening forgotten cupboards. Exploring spaces we barely looked at during viewings. Cataloguing what stays, what goes and what deserves a closer look. Not the most exciting job but it feels like an important first step. Because before we can decide what this place might become, we need to understand what it already is.

The truth is that we don't yet have all the answers. We don't know exactly what we'll discover. We don't know which challenges are waiting for us behind closed doors or beneath layers of plaster. What we do know is that the next few months will be spent learning. Learning about the building, the land and about life here. For now, that's enough. After all, every restoration begins somewhere.

Ours begins with a vacuum...

- Dominic