I'm a homeowner, sort of. I bought Casa Crespo with my lovely wife Louise a bit over four years ago. On a thirty year mortgage we've barely paId any of the vig as of yet, the vig being Brooklynese for interest, so Chase Manhattan is still the majority owner here by a long shot. So how come they don't kick in their share when I spend a good chunk of my hard-earned for the endless repairs a house requires? They're the senior partners here but I'm the one shelling out all the Benjamins for supplies. Seems like we've been fixing this joint since the day we closed the deal.

A lifelong renter, buying a house was a big step for me and seemed to make the lovely wife happy. It sure did. Happy to bug me into fixing all sorts of things that seemed just fine to me. Happy to find our furniture woefully inadequate and happier still to replace said furniture. Happy to cajole me into replacing the kitchen, even though I'm the cook in this outfit and thought the kitchen was okay.

A lot I knew. Turns out it was the worst kitchen ever so we started ripping stuff out and pricing cabinets. Wow, as they say. Guess who's building the new cabinets'Me. I used to be good at that sort of thing, did it for a living many moons ago. Hope i didn't forget how. Step one was relocating the washer and dryer into the garage, so of course now we needed a door from the kitchen into the garage. Not just any door, naturally, but a steel fireproof door as per building regulations and one that's well insulated too. Garages are not noted for being overly warm in the winter and even though we recently replaced out heating system we didn't put any radiators in the garage, letting the car fend for itself .

As my usual luck would have it the only logical spot to put the door had four (count 'em) pipes running through it so we had to hire a plumber to to move them. I don't do complicated plumbing jobs, especially those involving natural gas lines due to my admittedly unnatural aversion to fiery explosions. While all this was going on Louise decided to point the house since the bricks leaked a bit here and there (Translation: quite a bit.). Pointing involves chipping out the loose mortar between the bricks and replacing it. We priced contractors who specialize in brick pointing and guess who's doing the pointing? No, not me but the lovely Louise, who's becoming quite the expert at it. Our house is finally as dry as a James Bond martini, not a leak to be found. But now I've got to paint the bricks with a special brick paint, a light beige for the mortar and a brick-orange for the orange bricks.

Now I've got to leave my halfway ripped-out kitchen remain as it is for a while and paint the house since the weather will be changing soon and you have to use this special (and expensive) paint when it's mild outside. That's okay by me since I'm taking my sweet time building the cabinets. I happen to be a world-class procrastinator and I'm long past the target date for finishing the kitchen. Not that it was my target date, mind you. I'm in no rush to finish the kitchen since that will likely mean that it's time to tackle another big job I wasn't aware was so pressing. And in the meantime I have to work and earn money, write this blog, play my music and write my songs and stories.

As you might well imagine, life's been kind of full of late around Casa Crespo. And we're doing all this for practically no money since we happen to be in possession of practically no money so that works out pretty well. I've spent my whole life working without a net, but this is really getting hairy, like my tightrope is suddenly suspended over the Grand Canyon and the Grand Canyon is full of molten lava. Good thing I'm not a worrier or I'd be worried.

Funny, for all the work we've done in four years the house looks pretty much the same except for the new door and the torn up kitchen. As I paint the bricks they still look like bricks, only really nice bricks. The new heating system we installed doesn't change the look of the place one bit. To be honest, when I finish the kitchen it's not going to be startlingly different from the old one, the only change being a bit more counter work space for me. The entrance door still leads into it and the room is still the size it was before, period. Our house is attached on both sides to identical houses in a long row so it's not like I can knock out walls and build extensions or anything like that, for which I suppose I ought to be eternally grateful. But it does seem to me that we've done so much labor in the joint that it ought to resemble the Taj Mahal by now instead of the nice little brick row house it happens to be.

I'm told these are the things homeowners must do. And do and do and keep on doing until you drop dead from so much doing. Nobody has ever satisfactorily explained to me exactly why homeowners must keep doing these things, only that's it's part of the deal and one of the grave responsibilities of being a landlord. Never gave it much thought before. I guess I was so happy doing the things that I enjoy when I was a mere renter that I just didn't realize how miserable I was not owning my own home. Back then I'd finish my work and then have the rest of the day to not work. I was under the mistaken impression that I liked that arrangement: you work, then you're done working. Silly me. I stand corrected. Now I work and … do more work! Great…

I shouldn't complain since I don't do a couple of things most homeowners do all the time and that's mow the lawn and tend the garden. Don't have those. I replaced the lawn in my back yard right off the bat with pretty white stones and cemented the rest of the small yard. I grow nothing. Hence I mow nothing, dig up nothing, weed or water or fertilize nothing. I love my backyard. Love it so much i did the same in the front of the house too. Maintenance-free, it is. As a matter of fact, everything I do around here is done with an eye towards not having to do much at all. I have things I like to do with my life other than monkey around this little house with tools and ladders and paint brushes constantly looking for where I left my tape measure.

Towards that end, everything I do I sort of overdo so I never have to do it again. Case in Point: There was a crack in the base of the foundation so I poured a few tons of cement into the form I built around the offending foundation wall. It would take a major earthquake to budge the foundation now, which is fine by me. Not being a spider, I dislike going down into the crawl space and now don't have to. When I build my cabinets they're also going to be overbuilt; simple, functional and strong as hell so I'll never have to deal with them again except to fetch food and utensils out of them. If I could line the house with plastic laminate I would. That stuff lasts forever. I just wish it wasn't such hard work to be lazy.