Mystery!

So can one of you cool houseblogs people tell me how to make a personalized banner? My html skill is pretty much limited to cut and paste.

Someone was evidently trying to jimmie the lock at the house because there's something metal stuck in it. Very odd, considering that the basement door that blew off is still wide open and anybody could get in through there if they really wanted to do so. There is still a problem with looting in the city, although our neighborhood is mostly repopulated so our house seems like a strange choice. One never knows.

There is still an ongoing mystery about the location of our sewer line. The pipe on record with the water board doesn't lead anywhere, so somewhere along the line there was a new sewer pipe put in, but nobody knows where and we can't find the clean out. Mr. Nola has dug up half the yard trying to find it, as we have to locate the line to hook up the still-useless trailer so that we might be given access to it. What a waste. (ooh, bad unintended pun)

Moving houses

In today's Times-Pic there's a city notice of 121 houses slated for demolition because they are "blocking the public right of way." That is, they floated off their foundations and landed in a street somewhere. These 121 are listed in the paper because they can't identify an owner, so there must be a bunch more that just aren't listed publically. Some of them as listed as follows: "2435 Montecello St., found at Gordon and S. Dorgenois." So those houses floated far enough that they weren't even on the same street anymore! Wild. Today on Oprah they interviewed a family who rode several blocks on the roof of their house before grabbing onto a tree. I know everywhere else in the world people have forgotton about all of this, but here it's still going on. You just keep hearing more crazy stories.

One of the problems is that every step the city takes to rebuild, somebody has to try and stop it. Last month a group of homeowners got an injunction preventing the city for demolishing their houses, which they (the homeowners) claimed were salvagable. These were houses that were blocking streets! I admire the optimism of anyone who thinks they can move their house back to where it started and fix it, but honestly, there's just no way Those houses shouldn't be there, should never have been built there in the first place.

Oops, that didn't work.

I tried to send a picture directly from the newspaper's website. Oh well - here's what it should have had:


Those who think New Orleans is dead don't know New Orleans. Yesterday, Stella and I watched the Krewe of Barkus Parade though the French Quarter, with the theme: "The Wizard of Paws: There's No Place Like Home." It's a fundraiser for the LA SPCA. If there's any other parade in the country where families, local celebrities, and drag queens one and all come together with their dogs dressed in costume to meander through the city, I don't know about it.

Demolition, part deux

We've concluded that the house isn't beyond repair. We're going to try and repair it for within the amount of our insurance settlements, and then either sell it and move on or go ahead and live in it. I honestly don't know if we can afford to insure it, even if we can get it raised above flood level.

At any rate, we've started gutting the rooms with the most damage. Mr. Nola got some help from our nice tenants at Chateau Danneel ripping out some bedroom walls. Fun! We found a covered-up doorway between the pink bedroom and the living room, indicating that that room was not always a bedroom. Most of the house has a layer of drywall over the old plaster walls, which had cracked over the years. Happily this means we get to see some old wallpaper - check it out:


We're finding that the mold has not grown as far up the studs as we had feared. Once we pull the drywall and plaster out, we can probably spray the studs with bleach and probably even salvage the baseboards.

In the other bedroom that was gutted last week we uncovered some windows that had been covered over when they put in the drywall. I have no idea why. Well, I can guess it was a combination of privacy/draftiness/security - but I think a set of storm windows and blinds could do the same thing, and check out the wonderful light gained!

BEFORE:



AFTER:



We're back on Lafitte's list to come back and raise the house - again - only this time onto a new foundation with pilings. That ought to keep it in place for a couple of decades. Here's a shot of some debris that we threw out the window.

What's next, locusts?

You might have heard about tornadoes in New Orleans this week. Fortunately, our house wasn't in the path. Unfortunately, the storage lot where Mr. Nola keeps his boat was. It isn't wrecked, but has some cosmetic damage from having the roof of "Mardi Gras City" land on top of it. I shit you not. Another boat in the lot had an RV on top of it, so I guess he got off lucky.

Here is the smaller of the pieces of roof that were pulled off the boat. The bigger one had already been moved when he got there with the camera. Also pictured are overturned trucks across the street.