After the Storm

The meeting of the engineers

2007-06-29T11:06:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I was messing around on the city’s website and discovered there’s been a complaint filed about the condition of our yard. Oh dear. Well, I concede that we don’t cut the grass as often as we could, and the contractors haven’t been very meticulous about containing the debris into tidy piles. However, this program is intended for people to report abandoned and neglected properties, which is obviously not the case with our house. It seems that about a dozen houses on our street have been written up for similar problems - mostly uncut grass and weeds - and really our street is not one that is notable for nuisance properties. I imagine one of the neighbors is putting in the complaints as a gentle nudge to remind everyone to clean up their yards. Meh. It worked though - we had the yard guy over today to give a thorough buzz to all the growing things, and got the contractor clean up the scattered debris.

Our bigger issue, that I wouldn’t fault my next-door neighbor at all for complaining about, is the chimney that has sagged about 6 inches since the house got lifted. It hasn’t been properly supported, and is just suspended on the side of the house right now. The fireplace is non-functional anyway, probably since the last big hurricane blew through, so we want to just take the whole thing off, unless it’s cheaper to shore it up and fill in the gap with masonry. Evidently there will be a meeting of the engineers today to decide how to proceed. Each of the contractors and the architect have engineers on the job, so you’d think we’d have avoided the sagging chimney to begin with. I keep telling them I don’t care what they do with it, I just want it done before the whole thing falls on my neighbor’s driveway, or even worse on his car or house.

The meeting of the engineers is also going to discuss the columns supporting the center of the house. The specs from the architect’s engineer called for 8x8 wood columns and laminated wood beams running the length of the house. Mr. Nola, the contractor, and I would like to see something more substantial given the insane weight of the house and the tenacity of local termites. We’d feel better about concrete columns and steel beams - but then we’re not engineers so they ought to tell us the best materials to use. I realize wood has some properties that make it stronger than steel in some applications, so maybe it’s just psychological, but then again I really don’t want to replace a column in five years because some formosan termites have taken up residence in it.

Status update on the big lift

2007-06-03T13:05:00.000-07:00

Those with long memories might recall that our house was elevated last November so that we could 1) repair the foundation damage from Hurricane Katrina's flood, and 2) raise the house high enough that we won't have to worry about flooding ever again. The pictures of the big lift are on Flickr, and it was pretty cool to watch. Anyway, this kind of project doesn't just get done in a day. Or a week, or a month, or a year, for that matter. Since November we've seen a few periods where there is a flurry of activity, followed by several weeks of nothing. Mostly we just nod at the contractors and write checks. My primary involvement with the process is securing the financing, which is ongoing and brutal.

We've got scores of guys working on it: our architect (mostly useless, it seems), his engineer (also mostly useless), the foundation contractor (generally good, but hard to get a hold of), his engineer (rumored to exist, I've never met him), his various subs, the general contractor (whom we love), his engineer, his various subs... you get the idea. Sometimes the engineers have to pow-wow over what specs are needed to keep the house in place. Hopefully this results in the best quality outcome as opposed to too many cooks spoiling the broth.

There have been a few hiccoughs along the way, of course. We got a stop work order from the city shortly after the house was lifted, because somehow none of the contractors involved realized we lacked a permit to raise the house. Since we'd been downtown with the plans more than a few times to get sign offs from safety and permits on the project and the funding, I'm baffled as to how nobody at the city ever pointed this particular permit out to us, either. Anyway, the stop work order came in the day before the concrete guy was scheduled to pour the new foundation, and evidently the concrete guy takes weeks to schedule. The foundation contractor's secretary wound up holding a sit-in at the safety and permits office until somebody signed off on the permit. I suspect they just wanted to get rid of her, but I really don't care.

So, the foundation got poured, and the general contractor subsequently began building the framing to go between the foundation and the raised house - basically the walls of the new ground floor, which will be our garage and workshop. This takes a while. Eventually we get word that they're ready to lower the house onto the new walls and foundation, and we were all excited about getting to that milestone. But wait! The day before the house was to be lowered, one of the engineers realizes that one wall of the foundation was POURED SEVEN INCHES OFF FROM WHERE IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN. Seven inches isn't normally a big deal, unless you've got a six-inch wide wall that is supposed to rest directly on top of it.

Houston, we have a problem.

Remarkably, the concrete guy who previously took weeks to schedule came out the next day and poured a new foundation right next to the old one. Fortunately the footings underneath had been poured wide enough to accomodate both. Unfortunately, the wall built by the general contractor has to be taken down and rebuilt. Because it's structural, they can't reuse the same panels, and a decent chunk of work has to be replaced. The foundation guy doesn't seem to know it yet, but they're paying for it. Our best guess is that whoever measured to lay our the foundation forms started from the inside of the opposite wall instead of the outside, which is an understandable mistake, but it still set us back about a month, and cost several thousand dollars in materials and labor. Feh.

So here's a picture of the house with the framed in garage, just before it was lowered into final position.

Come to New Orleans

2007-01-21T15:40:00.000-08:00

Let's all drink a toast to the New Orleans Saints, who have done a fine job of reminding the country that we're still here and we're coming back. Even though our Cinderella season is over, the season of celebrating in New Orleans is just getting underway. If you want to do something to support one of America's great cities, you should come on down. Come to Mardi Gras. Come to Jazz Fest. If you want to look like a cool insider, come to French Quarter Fest, which is less crowded than Jazz Fest, and it's Free!

If you can't afford a hotel, you can pitch a tent in my yard. You could volunteer with a clean-up team somewhere if you're so inclined, but you can also help out just by eating in some fabulous French Quarter restaurants. You can join the paparazzi stalking Brangelina outside their Quarter mansion. You can hear legendary jazz musicians, check out our world-class zoo and aquarium, or if you're a history buff, visit the National World War II museum.

You'll have a great time, and you can do your good dead for the year just by taking a vacation, and then telling your friends back home to do the same.

I hope we never have to move...

2006-12-18T12:28:00.000-08:00

Because so help me God, I am never applying for a mortgage again.

Most housebloggers have mortgages, or at least have had one in the past. There's a Byzantine application with loads of records to produce. Even so-called "low-doc" loans require a lot of documentation. But once you get approved, you set a date to close, sign your name a million or so times, and the loan is done. A pain in the neck, but not unreasonable given the amount of money involved.

Then you have the SBA. Because our property was damaged in a disaster, I am eligible for an SBA loan to pay for damages not covered by insurance. Until August of 2005, both Mr. Nola and I had very good credit histories. We met the loan requirements pretty easily, filed a fairly standard mortgage application, and were approved for the loan a little over a year ago.

12 months later, we've still only received about 10% of the approved loan. It has been a constant struggle to move our loan through the SBA's system. Every few weeks, I call asking about the money. Every few weeks, they come up with another hoop for me to jump through. I've visited the office multiple times to turn in forms, paid multiple processing, application, or title fees, and it's just never done. I paid recording fees in August, and again in October (when they realized they charged me the wrong amount in August.)

Most recently the SBA lady told me I had to get title insurance - even though I still had a valid title policy at the time the loan was approved, it has expired during the processing period so it has to be reissued. Who do you suppose will pay for that? Nonetheless, the rest of the funds cannot be disbursed without a title policy naming SBA as a co-insured, so off to the title company I go. And what do I learn there, but that the SBA has not recorded the mortgage with the city, despite my having paid nearly $500 in recording fees. So I can't get the loan money from the SBA because they have failed to do their own paperwork. Meanwhile, my house is eight feet in the air, and Boudreaux the contractor wants his money.

I know government programs are supposed to be bureaucratic, but really. This is Kafka-esque.

FEMA Study Shack

2006-12-02T11:10:00.000-08:00

'Tis I, Nola, ensconced in my FEMA trailer while I study for my first-ever law school exams. To my right, I can see Mr. Nola and his dad painting in Maison Derriere. To my left, I can see straight through to the street around the lincoln-log type pilings holding That Old House off the ground. The lone remnant of landscaping is there, a sad little desiccated camellia, the only one in the hedge that survived the flooding, but not the subsequent neglect. All of the other trees/shrubs have gone the way of the dumpster.

Earlier, some of Boudreaux's crew were here, jackhammering the walls of the old basement. The rubble from the walls is being tossed into the area below ground level, so less fill will have to be brought in to eliminate the sunken basement. Around the perimeter, all of the old foundation has been removed and a trench dug for the new chain wall. There were at least four different types of structure used as the old foundation. No wonder the house settled crooked.

It's very comforting having the whole thing resting on steel I-beams right now. Something about all that steel just feels more solid than wood beams, even though I know intellectually that wood beams have physical properties that are in some ways superior. I kind of hope we can keep the steel beams. We certainly wouldn't have to worry about termites getting through them.

The guys with the jackhammers are back, which tells me that I should get back to work as well. The FEMA trailer may be completely impractical as a dwelling, but it's a great study shack. I've got a table to work at, a bed to nap in, a refrigerator and microwave for brain food, plus there's nobody around to object if I cough my head off. Beats the heck out of the library.

But wait, there's more!

2006-11-27T21:15:00.000-08:00

Mr. Nola posting:
While the work at TOH was rocketing ahead, there was also a flurry of activity at Maison Derriere. A nasty flu conspired with my complete inability to estimate a realistic schedule, putting us several weeks behind on the painting. This was going to be a problem as soon as the cabinets were delivered because I had scheduled SurferDude's crew to receive and install them. So the weekend was spent in a marathon paint blitz in a house with no power nor water, taking occasional breaks to look next door and see the preparations underway to lift TOH.

Enough of the walls were painted that SD was able to install the cabinets, but there remains a lot of painting to finish. I need to accept the fact that I am not a fast painter. Unfortunately, I have fully embraced the fact that I'm too cheap to pay a professional to do the job, causing Nola no small amount of consternation.

I have mixed feelings about the previously mentioned "disappearing roofer." Whenever I have him on the phone he seems like a sincerely nice person. The problem is that his promises to finish the job, or even to call me if he can't make it, have gone unkept for too long. I had him on the phone again today and I heard the same line that I've heard every other day for the past month. If he shows up to finish the job, I might dignify him with a nom de blog; at the very least I shall stop complaining about him. But the smart money bets that he won't show up tomorrow. I will say this in his favor: at least he doesn't screen incoming calls. I have seen a dozen contractors who decided not to pick up the phone because a current or former client is calling-- I always worried that it would be my call that they ignore next time.

I met SD's plumber at Maison Derriere this afternoon and remain cautiously optimistic. The utility room floor plan has been reconfigured to something a little more workable. This new layout can be completely buggered with a poorly placed pipe, so the plumber has to think in three dimensions and use (gasp!) a certain amount of common sense when re-plumbing for the contents of this room, or the adjacent kitchen, or the two bathrooms that are directly overhead. Admittedly, this isn't the easiest problem that the noble trade of plumbing has ever seen. If it were easy, I would do it myself.*

* The agony you Jedi just felt was Nola, flinching at the idea of me taking on any more DIY projects as part of this undertaking.

Airborne House!!

2006-11-27T14:33:00.000-08:00

That Old House is up in the air! Mr. Nola here, and I guess I brought this upon myself. A few well-intentioned updates to Nola's blog and suddenly EVERYTHING happens at once. It's been almost a year since we told the foundation guys that we wanted to save the house, which meant lifting. We started hearing rumors of "two weeks" back in April, and "any day now" promises such as this one ever since.

Frankly, I did not believe it when I was told that a crew was going to drop off lifting jacks over the weekend... we had heard this before and it never came to fruition. But I am astonished over how much happened in the course of three days. The entire lift happened while I was at work-- about eight feet in less than six hours, so I missed the whole thing. I'm told that the lifting process was slow enough to be imperceptible, something along the lines of 15 minutes per foot, pausing between each lift to reset the equipment and supports. Neighbors didn't report any cracking nor crashing sounds, and the proof of the result is in the pictures. Not a lot of advance notice, but we FINALLY have something to show for all this waiting.

Unfortunately the time-lapse photos did not work out as planned, so there will be no movie to post. There are a bunch of pics taken at various points of the lift over on Flickr.

This was apparently a very big deal to more than just us. Despite the shoring contractors having been in the business for six generations, most of Boudreaux's family (including Mama and Papa Boudreaux) came out to witness the lift in progress. Now that TOH is in mid-air, it has more people snapping it's picture than Lindsay Lohan's boobs. The former owners, on vacation at the time of the lift, received no less than four phone urgent calls regarding "what happened to their house." I even saw a fender-bender caused by a pair of rubbernecking gawkers who were more interested in our airborne house than the road - I really thought that New Orleans had seen it all by now, but it's good to know that total strangers share our excitement.

This is probably one of the points where work seems to grind to a halt, but the timing could be worse. The old foundation needs to be ripped out before the new one can be poured, and then the concrete must harden for a few weeks before anything should be built on top of it. Each of these milestones comes with an invoice, and we still need to come up with a *huge* wad of cash for the work that was already done in the last week. Even though we're approved, the funding sources need to move money from their control into ours. This takes time, but our contractors want to be paid about as much as I want to keep them working at a good clip.

Mr. Nola is determined to make this blog current

2006-11-18T19:10:00.000-08:00

Since TOH is stuck in purgatory, and we are desperate to get out of a suburban apartment complex and return to our lives in Uptown New Orleans, Maison Derriere is our big priority. Unfortunately we had a run of bad luck with subcontractors.

Our plumber was great... couldn't think of a bad thing to say about him. Note my use of the past tense. After Katrina, he started to miss appointments, rarely returned calls, and eventually his overflowing voice mail was simply disabled. I have no idea what happened to him, nor what changed, but I have yet to find a plumber who was anything like this one. Matt, if you're out there, please CALL US!

The electrical work on Maison Derriere was supposed to have been done by Sam, the electrician we've used for a decade. We scheduled his start date before purchasing Maison Derriere and were understanding when he said that he was running late, but he later announced that his wife convinced him to retire, so he would not start our job. I wish him well and he certainly deserves it, having worked as an electrician twice as long as Ms. Nola and I have been alive, but we didn't know where to turn.

Not wanting to leave us hanging, our retiring electrician recommended another guy. Turns out that this electrician, let's call him Bubba, employs Sam JUNIOR. Sam Jr. doesn't want to run his own business and is content to be dropped off at a jobsite and do what Bubba tells him to do. With the exception of picking up checks, Bubba has yet to show up on time for a single meeting. Bubba has lied about work that would be done, about work that had been done, and about the paperwork.

We haven't seen Bubba for over two months, despite numerous promises that haven't been fulfilled. If we fire him, we're out $3k for work that I paid for but later learned wasn't complete. Worse still, the sheetrock is now up and several electricians have told me that they will NOT finish a job started by another company. So unless we want to hire somebody who is disreputable from the start, or rip out all the wiring that's already finished, we're probably stuck with Bubba.

The roofer... oy. People in New Orleans will tell you that a good roofer around here was worth their weight in gold BEFORE Katrina, and that's about what you would expect to pay. After Katrina, there are plenty of roofers around and the prices are lower, but it's anybody's guess if the roofer will do a decent job. With plenty of roofers setting up shop on the Gulf Coast hoping to cash in, you may imagine that there are plenty of scam artists, and even some of the good guys will abandon current jobs and customers in favor of a bigger/faster payday. This trend proved reliable, and we had arrangements with three roofers in a row who never got around to starting our little job. One even started but then took off after the first day when a better offer came in. We managed to find someone --I'm not even going to bother with a nom de blog-- who seemed nice enough and eventually (5 weeks later than promised) started the job. The only problem is that the employee he sent up to our roof left one vent unfinished, promising to come back the following day. The office manager came to pick up a check, having assumed (as did I) that the job was finished. I have been chasing these guys for weeks, getting one promise after another that the job will be finished immediately. Finishing the small job that they were already paid for isn't nearly as profitable as moving on to something else, so they never keep their promises to show up. Filing a complaint with the contractors' licensing board is very time-consuming and mostly ineffective, so that's truly a last resort.

There is one shining star in our contractor mess-- I call him SurferDude. He defies every single contractor stereotype you could come up with. If Nola were to have a crush on him, I wouldn't blame her a bit. Making matters worse for me, his carpenters are young, good-looking guys with Scottish accents... Nola swoons. They are a relatively inexperienced crew, so mistakes happen, but SurferDude always acknowledges if there was a problem and [gasp!] he FIXES it! Occasionally the lack of experience shows in the details --remember not to place a lightswitch where it would be blocked by an open door-- but they are minor and manageable if you know what you want and can present a clear plan in advance. SD and his staff always show up when expected, they are enthusiastic and honest... I just hope that our jobs are finished before these guys burn out!

Mr. Nola Continues

2006-11-18T19:03:00.001-08:00

The nice pace of progress at Maison Derriere has stalled. Badly. Yet work there has been moving at a lightning pace when compared to the progress at That Old House.

As mentioned by Ms. Nola, there is very little that can be done at TOH until our shoring company finally comes and gets the house up in the air. If we replace the roof, it will surely be damaged while lifting the entire structure eight feet. Same for sheetrock inside, and even most framing changes. So we're at the mercy of a shoring company that has been promising to begin work "in two weeks" or "next week" since May. The current promise (from Monday) was to have started moving equipment to our site by the end of this week... Saturday is upon us and nothing was done. The idea that we could have hired a different company --perhaps an out-of-towner that wasn't already familiar with the this house-- and had the work finished by now is frustrating, unsettling, and oddly comforting, all at the same time. Rather than play armchair quarterback, I just hope that our contractor will do a better job than another could have. If, of course, they ever get started.

Another issue which has represented at least part of the delay is funding. Our insurance settlement --the part that we did receive-- is being held hostage by the mortgage company. They won't issue any part of that until we can show progress, but we will need to write some enormous checks on the day that the contractor starts working. We're keeping money on hand, but we're broke. Go figure. The FEMA/SBA loan is a similar challenge, further complicated by the arcane bureaucratic quagmire that you've probably heard others complain about endlessly, and I'd rather not go on about here. The sad thing is that we're not asking for a handout... this is a freaking LOAN that we pre-qualified for within a couple weeks of Katrina. But all the red tape has required the effort of a full-time job just to cut through. Ms. Nola is a real trooper here, and she deserves a lot of credit for her persistence and organization. Without her, the entire financial side of this equation would simply not have gotten off the ground.

Speaking of funding and the SBA loan, Chateau Danneel can't put on the market yet. It would be nice to cash out and run, but there is some complexity with new liens on that property. To be on the safe side, we would like to make a big dent in the work for TOH (and its associated cash outlay) before we list CD for sale. Hopefully we can sell it before the larger capital gains tax kicks in, which is (I think) 2 years after moving out of a property.

The lawsuit against our insurance company, who "forgot" to activate part of our flood coverage, is going to be a longer battle than we hoped. A settlement would have been the smart thing on their part, but they seem to think that we can be scared off if they drag this on long enough. So this case will probably go to trial, maybe sometime in 2008, and we eventually expect to win. Our lawyer is skilled and enthusiastic, and the facts are solidly in our favor. But it will be a long and frustrating fight.

I assure you, we're open!

2006-11-17T18:51:00.000-08:00

The amount of activity on this blog has been only slightly less than the amount of progress at the houses, so it's time to bring in a new subcontractor. For the blog, that is.

This post comes to you from Mr. Nola, a.k.a. the husband of this blog's executive officer, Nola. I think there had been some confusion on that issue already. I've considered taking the helm for a while now, as Nola is far too busy to manage the blog on top of her other responsibilities. The final straw came when Nola told me that we had been solicited to audition for an ABC reality show as "a homeowner that is in over your head" with renovation projects! I'm sure the offer went out to anyone with a houseblog, but part of me suspects that the scope of our projects and recent silence on this blog were factors.

Nola didn't think she had enough to do already, so she started law school this fall. Until her schedule lightens up and/or Stella's overall health and development rockets forward, blog entries will be submitted from Mr. Nola instead of the original [Ms.] Nola. I hope that this discontinuity will be offset by the additional content.

WHAT WERE THEY THINKING????

2006-08-02T10:39:00.000-07:00

Things are chugging along at Maison Derriere, where the HVAC systems and ductwork have been replaced and the walls torn out to create an open living/dining/kitchen area. I'll rustle up some pictures soon. Currently I am confounded by the Weirdest Utility Room Ever, which is the first major incidence of the "what were they thinking" syndrome so common among renovators.

So it's an approximately 12x12 space, between the kitchen and breakfast room, that contains the laundry facilities, a small powder room, and a pair of double doors out to the driveway. It's not the main entrance to the house, but one that would certainly be used often. The room is directly beneath the two upstairs bathrooms, so all of the plumbing in the house goes through this vortex of awkwardness.

Smack in the middle of the 12x12 room is a floor-to-ceiling box, about 4x4, that contains the powder room. Affixed to the side of the box is a smaller box containing the water heater, which is directly in front of the driveway door, with just enough clearance to open the door. The boxes are sheathed with exterior siding, giving the appearance of, well, an outhouse in the middle of the room.

Toaccess the laundry area, you have to go all the way around the box because the plumbing lines from the upstairs bathrooms are in front of it to the left. Even stranger is the toilet in the laundry area, outside of the powder room which has its own toilet. The only explanation I can think of for this is that the toilet in the unfinished laundry room, close to the driveway door, would have been for domestic workers. Reminder: This is the South. Dear God, I think I bought a house with segregated bathrooms. Shudder.

The plumbing fixtures are all removed so we're just going by the location of drains and pipes. It's totally FUBAR. We're trying to figure out how to A) get rid of the box right in front of the door, B) improve access to the laundry area and driveway door, and C) wedge in a powder room somehow so the only bathrooms aren't on the second floor. The challenge is because this part of the house is on slab, we really need to use the existing drains. Of the two toilet drains in the room, they're both in the worst possible locations. One is in the middle of the room, in front of the exterior door; the other is directly in the path of what would be the best place to put a door to the interior hall.

For your amusement, I will scan in a diagram. I ask you:

WHAT WERE THEY THINKING????

Flooring Shopping Spectactular

2006-07-21T11:29:00.000-07:00

As I mentioned last week, I've been torn about what to do for flooring in the main living/dining/kitchen area. When I first looked at the house, I immediately wanted to do it in a terra-cotta look porcelein tile. After thinking more about the cost involved with installing 600+ square feet of tile, I reconsidered.

The old subfloors are solid, but would need a concrete board backing on top if we were going to put down tile. Laying, screwing down, and taping the concrete board would be labor intensive and have little room for error. Actually laying tile is the same only more so. Mr. Nola is good at detail work, but I'm more of a slap-a-coat-of-paint-on-and-forget-it sort of girl. Given the work load we've got going, self-install on tile was just not going to work. Flooring contractors quoted me around $7.50 sq ft installed price, plus the cost of installing the concrete board, for the cheapest tile they had. $5K+? Not worth it.

So I've been shopping laminates, with the thought that even if they aren't as durable, for the difference in cost I can replace it in 5-10 years and still come out ahead. Plus, floating laminates are a simple enough installation we could do it ourselves and not have to mess with the cost and hassle of lining up installers. Generally I'm a wood floor snob, and don't believe in fake wood. But as my mantra on this house goes: its-a-rental. Plus, it was built in the 50's, when if they had had laminates, they would surely have used them. It's my time-travel theory of architectural authenticity .

So how psyched am I to have found this laminate floor at Lumber Liquidators for $.59 a square foot? It's marked down because it has a slight bevel on the edge that makes the planks look more like real wood, IMO. It's an 8 mm laminate with 3 mm of foam backing already on it, so it's reasonably good quality. Honestly, it looks about as good as any other laminate I've seen, and did I mention it's $.59 a square foot? The entire project will cost less than $500! For that price, it could have jagged glass coming out of the edges for all I care.

It's not easy being green

2006-07-21T10:50:00.000-07:00

I've been on an obsessive search for light fixtures for Maison Derriere that are 1) affordable, 2) not ugly, and 3) energy efficient. Even though this will be a rental after a while and thus the electric bills won't be my problem, I still feel obligated reduce fuel consumption where I can.

This being the South, we use ceiling fans. Happily what Southerners have always known about using fans to keep rooms comfortable bears itself out on the energy consumption front. The light fixtures on the fans, on the other hand, typically take about 240 watts of heat inducing incandescents to run. The fan winds up blowing that heat around the room. Bummer.

Halogen bulbs are better than incandescent, in general, in that they give off more light for the wattage used so you don't really need as much. They can burn HOT though, and the fluorescent fan lights I've found are still in the 100-200 watt range.

Now if you're willing to drop some money, there are some really sexy options out there for compact fluorescent lighting. American Fluorescent Lighting and Modern Fan are a few examples. Fluorescents don't have to be cold flickery noisy light anymore either. Better quality CF bulbs are pretty hard to tell from incandescents. They're more expensive, of course, but last for years and use about a tenth of the energy.

Eventually, I picked out this fan from the Home Despot. It meets my specifications for price and Energy Star compliance, and I thought they weren't that ugly. Mr. Nola begs to differ. He hates them. Well, I can see where he's coming from.

So I think we're going to wind up with a fan that uses regular light bulbs and just put our own compact fluorescent bulbs in it. The screw-in CF bulbs aren't AS efficient or long-lived as the pin-connection kind, but it's still a big improvement over incandescents. This is the most likely selection.

The process of choosing ceiling fans has involved multiple trips to Lowes and Home Depot, and many hours of internet research. It's a shopping compulsion I inherited from my mother. In meantime I've picked out sconces, mini-pendants, and track lighting without too much obsessing. Well, I did buy one track set and return it, but you kind of have to see stuff outside the store to get an idea what it really looks like, right? They're all either CF or halogen fixtures, so hopefully that will offset our 9 months a year of air conditioning consumption.

Well, at least it's something.

Voici Maison Derriere

2006-07-12T16:36:00.000-07:00

We're closing tomorrow, the checks are written, and the insurance policies are in place, so I guess I can post some pics of the new project. I also have a question. The subfloor in the living area of the house has old diagonal timbers over beams. They're not butted tightly against each other, and they're not perfect and level. So do I need a second subfloor on top of the old one? Rigid foam insulation to block drafts? Concrete board?

The house will eventually be a rental, so I'm not looking to do anything high-end on flooring. Ideally we would do ceramic tiles, the most flood-resistant option, but for cost and ease of installation we might go with something we can "float" over the subfloor.

This is the living room. The walls are gutted about halfway up, but the flood level in here was probably about a foot above the floor. The old wood floors were removed, but the subfloor is solid, albeit not smooth and perfectly level.

This is the same space from the other direction. We're going to take out as much of the dividing walls as possible, just leaving a column and some beams, to open the whole space up into one big cooking/eating/living space.

Down a few steps from the living room, this was used as a family room by the previous owners. Since it's on ground level, we're not going to put anything down there we wouldn't want to get wet during a bad storm. We'll use it as a play room for the kiddo.

Utility room, also on the lower level

Queue the Handel

2006-07-11T12:50:00.000-07:00

Miracle of miracles, we've just received word that we are at the top of the list for the foundation contractor we've been waiting on since December. They've got four houses "up in the air" right now, and once they come down, we'll be the next up. Exciting! I've got to figure out if I could do some sort of time-lapse video to show the house getting lifted. That would rock. Then we can take pictures standing underneath our house. Ah, the possibilities.

Maybe we'll get to live in this house someday, who knows?

Survivor's Guilt

2006-07-11T12:32:00.000-07:00

Annie's comment about my post yesterday asked if I've experienced "survivors guilt" about not having lost as much in Katrina as a lot of people did. Survivor's guilt is absolutely something that is going around in the area, generally among folks who lived in areas close to the river that were untouched by flooding. I know a lot of people have put a positive spin on that by volunteering or otherwise getting involved with the recovery efforts.

Personally, I am well aware that a lot of people are worse off that I am. That said, we were pretty well and truly screwed too. We are lucky in that Mr. Nola kept his job and that friends and family have come through for us in ways we never thought we'd have to ask. Still, we lost almost all of our furniture - the good family antique stuff too - and our house is damaged to the extent that the repairs will cost about as much as rebuilding altogether would have. We have to borrow money to pay for what the insurance doesn't cover, and that's almost as much as my original mortgage.

Since the initial shock wore off, we try to focus more on what to do now to try and recoup as much as we can and resume our lives. We'll be okay. It's inspiring to see the amount of work going on around us. More people are committed to this city than you would think. In the long run, it will be a better place. It's a very long run though.

I [heart] Craigslist!

2006-07-10T07:31:00.000-07:00

Good news to our RL friends who read this blog: we bought a bed for our future guest room this weekend off Craigslist. I'm psyched because it's the exact bed that I adored years ago when it was in stores, but at that time (hell, at this time) I couldn't afford "real" furniture. Having it turn up on craigslist when I actually need furniture is such a stroke of luck.

Here's a pic. Now I've got to find a nightstand to go with it.

Crisis averted, for now

2006-07-10T07:29:00.000-07:00

Well, we wound up moving back the closing on the little house. Due to ongoing shenanigans with the mortgage people, we're just giving up on doing the refi on the old place altogether and cashing in some other chips to buy the little house cash.

We're going to sell Chateau Danneel ASAP, so we're not over-invested in property in this area. Values for houses that didn't flood are up like 50% right now, and it's a good property to begin with (a large duplex) so I think it's a fair time to cash out. I kind of hope it doesn't actually sell until our tenants' leases are up, as I don't want them to be shut out. I'll have to find out how leases are handled when houses sell. I fully expect whoever buys it from us will convert the two units from 4 bed/1 bath to 3 bed/2 bath and resell them as condos with a big profit. Well, more power to them. I'm not doing it, I've got enough on my plate already.

God willing, we'll close on the little house this week and get started on repairing it right away. I'd really like to be back in town by the end of August. I just hate apartment living. Well, this apartment, anyway. It sucks.

Product Porn

2006-07-05T10:12:00.002-07:00

You can tell a renovator by the way they get aroused by exotic flooring. Here are some super-sexy floors:

Enviroglas makes a terrazzo-like tile out of recycled bottles cast in acrylic. You can make up your own color recipe for a custom look, even with little flecks of mirror glass in them to bring out the disco in your home. At $20/sq ft, it's too rich for my blood, but I still think it's really cool. They also make a drool-worthy countertop.

In a totally different direction, but still incredibly cool, are these Jigsaw Puzzle Floors. Again, too expensive for me at $15/sq ft., but wouldn't they be fierce in a game room or study? I'd love to see it done alternating maple and cherry woods.

I also found a site for some really hot cabinet hardware. These guys only sell to the trade, but I might just have to get a contractor's license this stuff is so fabulous.

Another conundrum

2006-07-05T09:30:00.000-07:00

I've griped before about my mortgage company holding my insurance settlement hostage without paying me interest. As it's worked out, I'm not making payments and my account is frozen so I'm not being charged interest, so I've come to terms with their holding the insurance money. The problem now is getting that money back so that I can actually use it.

So far I've received about 10% of the settlement. In order to give me any more, they want to send an inspector out to see that I've used that 10% wisely. That 10% isn't even enough to make the first payment on the foundation work that must be done before anything else can be repaired. The contractors want their money first, but the insurance-settlement-hostage-holding guy wants to see the work done first. I'd really like to knock their heads together a la "The Three Stooges."

Actually I'm so afraid my contractor will disappear that I have to treat him with kid gloves. They SO don't need my job, it's as if they're doing me a personal favor by taking my money. Provided I can pry the money to give them out of the mortgage guy, that is.

A local hair salon has an ad with a cartoon woman saying "With my new highlights, my contractor is bound to show up!" Hope springs eternal.

Gack

2006-06-29T17:34:00.000-07:00

Gaaack! Our financing's f*****d up and I now have a week to come up with $100,000! Why is nothing ever easy?

Plans in Progress

2006-06-29T14:08:00.000-07:00

Of course, with all of the walls opened up due to flooding, we've got to rework a few things. Check out the sketches the architect is working on!

Here's the floor plan of the house as we bought it.

Main floor - the plans are to move the kitchen to a larger room, move the laundry area from the master bath to the center hall leaving space for a walk-in closet, and relocate the stairs to be less steep/narrow.

Finished attic - there's a landing at the top of the new stairs, the existing bath will be enlarged, and the unfinished space on either end can be finished for another bedroom and play room/study.

Basement/garage space (created by elevating the house) - there will be a mudroom at the bottom of the new stairs, opening to the workshop and garage area on one side, and a half-bath and utility room on the other.

The degree to which the basement will have wide open spaces is determined by how much we can afford to spend on beams instead of columns. But at any rate, there will be parking for two cars and a 14x42 workshop.

Cool, eh? Obviously we'll see what has to be changed with the engineer meets with the contractors and they work up how much this fiasco will cost.

Wonders never cease

2006-06-28T11:03:00.000-07:00

The New Orleans Safety and Permits office. City Hall. June. Can you think of anything scarier? Well, no one could be more surprised than me that I was able to get in and out, with the form I needed signed AND a permit for the first $200K of work on That Old House, in less than 15 minutes. They were nice, they were efficient, my two-year-old daughter didn't even have time to start whining. Who'd have thought?

Regarding Linda's comment on my last post, we are planning to sell our first house, Chateau Danneel, in the next year. It recently appraised around 2.5 times what we paid for it eight years ago, so we think it's time to take what we can get for it and run. I don't want to have my entire net worth invested in local real estate for obvious reasons, and the maintenance on two rental properties is more than I want to take on.

Here's a little background on the house we're trying to buy now. I'm strongly tempted to call it Maison Derriere after one of my favorite Simpsons episodes, since it is, after all, in back of our primary house. However, it's an 1800 sq ft 50's split-level ranch, so calling it "Maison" anything seems a bit grandiose. Right after Katrina, we got in touch with the owners and made them an offer for the value of just the land, assuming the house was a tear-down. It sits on a lot that was originally part of our house's lot, but was subdivided in the 50's. We liked the idea of having a huge yard. The owners had been told the house could be sold for its pre-Katrina value, or more, if they waited until the panic was over, so we didn't reach a deal then.

Fast forward to last month, and I saw a For Sale sign on their yard. I called my agent to get the skinny, he told me the house was gutted, empty, and open, so Mr. N and I took a look. It's in surprisingly good shape. The lowest level, which is at ground level, had tile floors and cement block walls, so is basically fine. The middle level, where the kitchen, living and dining rooms are, has been gutted, and the upper floor, where the bedrooms are, is totally fine. The wood floors upstairs had evidently been covered by wool carpets for 50 years and are in remarkably good shape. Most importantly, structurally everything seems stable. Nothing is slanted, the doors work upstairs, there aren't cracks in the remaining plaster... unlike what we have at That Old House.

I had my agent run the comps, and got my contractor in to give us a rough estimate of what it would cost to replace the electrical and HVAC systems and finish out the middle floor. Ultimately we agreed with the sellers on a price in the middle of what we each originally had contemplated. The market in this area is such that even if we just flipped the place, selling it immediately after making repairs, we'd come out ahead. But given the amount of work that remains to be done on TOH, it wouldn't be a bad thing for us to have someplace in town to live until we're finally able to move in there.

So the plan is that we'll fix it up, live in it for a little while, then rent it out. As far as I'm concerned, the lowest level can be used for utility space and a play room for the kiddo, but we're not putting anything down there we can't stand to lose in a storm. I'll tell potential tenants the same thing. We're close to the university district so it's not a problem finding good tenants, and living right next door will make maintenance easier. Plus, we can still take out the fence between the lots and have a big yard. If the worst happens and there is another big flood, we'll take our flood settlement, put it in the bank, and tear the little house down and have an even bigger yard.

Major financial acrobatics are ongoing, of course. We're refinancing Chateau Danneel (the first house), getting enough cash out to buy Maison Derriere. Then when we sell Chateau Danneel next year, we own the little house outright, and can make enough rental income off of it to make up for not having the income from CD. It's fascinating how having some equity in a house I bought when I was 24 and had no idea what I was getting into now allows me to go to a lawyer's office, sign a bunch of papers, and come out with keys to a new house - without actually having spent any "real" money for it. It's a mad world.

Coming soon - architect's sketches of the modifications to TOH!

A Quick Review

2006-06-26T07:36:00.000-07:00

There has been lots of activity down here on the legal and financial fronts, less so on the actual construction front, but I guess the first two really have to be resolved before the third can proceed, right? Here are the highlights:

1) OK, I've admitted before to some degree of insanity. Keep that in mind when reading that we are in the process of buying ANOTHER house in New Orleans. It's the house directly behind ours, and for a variety of reasons the owners (a couple in their 90's) are selling it for pretty much a song. It's a 50's split-level, smaller than our house, but structurally sound and needs a lot less work than ours does. The plan is to finish it out, live there for a few months while our house is being worked on, then keep it as a rental. We can pull out the fence between the yards and have a nice big garden.

2) We've been waiting for six months for the foundation contractor to elevate our house and replace the foundation. They're that busy. In the meantime we're talking to the architect and getting plans drawn up. This is totally the money-pit-cliche renovation that started out as a simple kitchen redo and has become a massive whole house project.

3) The insurance company hired a big-guns downtown firm to fight our little lawsuit about the agent forgetting to write our flood contents policy. We're in the right, of course, so we'll probably wind up with some kind of settlement, but it's been lots of excitement for our lawyer.

4) We've qualified for a ridiculously-low-interest loan for any repairs that exceed our insurance settlement. Further proof that if you work hard enough, there's really no limit to how much debt you can achieve.

I'll upload some pics later on.

Ta-Daa

2006-04-29T22:20:00.000-07:00

Can you believe it, we have a FEMA trailer! They finally handed over the keys this week, after hooking us up to our neighbor's water supply and sewer line. Not entirely legal, but the neighbors aren't coming back anytime soon anyway. It'll get fixed eventually. The thing is actually totally cute and I'm dying to pimp it out. It screams for red velvet curtains and faux leopard skin throws. It's much too small for us to live in with a two-year-old, and I wouldn't want her to be around all the construction in the area anyway, but it will be a faboo backyard bar and guest shack. Mr. N is less enthusiastic than I am about a novelty "If the trailers a-rockin', don't come a-knockin'" license plate, but I think it's mandatory.

A volunteer group from Plano, TX did an amazing amount of gutting and clean-up for us this week. It's very humbling to have a group of professionals contribute literally thousands of dollars worth of labor so that we can put our money towards materials. It's a strange feeling, really.

Local charities

2006-03-03T09:42:00.000-08:00

Thanks for your comments - Laurie, I think there are a number of groups doing good work, here are some links.

My church - http://www.annunciationinexile.homestead.com - is running a disaster relief center from its parking lot and is providing volunteers and cash assistance to families in the surrounding Broadmoor neighborhood. It was featured in a USA Today article at http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-02-23-NO-churches_x.htm.

The LA SPCA rescued thousands of animals from the flooding and lost its building. It's running on fumes. Their address is http://www.la-spca.org. Adopting a homeless animal is also a great way to help.

Habitat for Humanity is constantly building, and is working in partnership with other organizations. Their address is http://www.habitat-nola.org. They also have volunteer opportunities ongoing.

And Children's Hospital is operating clinics for displaced families around the area who lost their medical insurance. http://www.chnola.org/katrina/donate.htm.

I've posted as much detail as I have about our particular situation because I don't think many people around the country have a good idea how frustrating it is here for a couple hundred thousand people with the same problems. There's so much said about how many billions are allocated to rebuilding - but that money doesn't go to the families, it's needed for rebuilding infrastructure. When even up-to-date insurance won't pay off your mortgage or repair the house, you're left with an entire city full of people - rich, poor, and middle class alike - over the proverbial barrel.

Six months later...

2006-03-02T20:29:00.000-08:00

...and what have we to show for it?

Flood and wind damage estimated at $400K to repair.
$270K in insurance settlements (currently being held hostage by Countrywide)
$4K in FEMA assistance
$330K mortgage, growing by around $1500/month in interest and fees
1 trailer with no water, electricity, or keys
About $10K in credit card debt.

And you know what? We're the lucky ones. We have an apartment to live in, and our neighborhood is already mostly reoccupied. In other parts of the city, they're still using dogs to locate the dead. Actually, there was a long-dead body found in a house on our block three weeks ago.

My true love Bono recorded this almost twenty years ago, but damned if it ain't perfect for New Orleans today:

Across the mud huts where the children sleep
Through the alleys of a quiet city street
Take the staircase to the first floor
Turn the key and slowly unlock the door
As a man breathes into a saxophone
Through the walls we hear the city groan
Outside it's america
Outside it'’s america

Across the field you see the sky ripped open
See the rain come through the gaping wound
Pounding on the women and children who run into the arms of america

Mystery!

2006-02-25T11:08:00.000-08:00

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

2006-02-22T21:13:00.000-08:00

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.

2006-02-20T14:30:00.000-08:00

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

2006-02-04T18:04:00.000-08:00

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?

2006-02-04T17:54:00.000-08:00

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.

"Good Neighbors," Indeed.

2006-01-26T13:18:00.000-08:00

Just as I was posting the previous, I got a call from my Good Neighbors at State Farm. Evidently when the nice new adjuster confirmed that there was more damage from wind and rain than had been previously recorded, he then suggested that maybe there wasn't as much flood damage to the house as they had already paid us for. So they CANCELLED PAYMENT on our check, and want to send out another adjuster to review the flood claim.

This is strictly punitive because we insisted on the second adjuster and have pursued the errors and omissions claim. I have contractors estimates to show that the flood damage is at least $100K more than the settlement in question. Long and short, I'll jump through their hoops, they can be on fire for all I care.

We're not trying to get anything that wasn't covered under the policies our agent's representative told us we had. We just want to fix our damn house, or at least get out of the mortgage.

Meanwhile, we still don't have trailer keys. We found out that they were being held until we got a temporary acccount from the electric company. The electric company tells us we can't set up an account until we give them a permit number. The guy that hooked the thing up says that the city was supposed to come inspect the trailer, issue the permit, and give it to Entergy. Also, the sewer pipe is connected to the storm drain, so they have to fix that before we could be allowed to take occupancy. I predict a trip to City Hall, to wait in line at Safety and Permits, in the future.

YOUR tax dollars at work friends. While they're passing the buck from office to office, the trailer FEMA paid $60,000 for is sitting useless in my driveway. Fair market value for such a trailer is about $20K, by the way. Meanwhile FEMA is supposed to be reimbursing our rent payments until the trailer can be occupied.

I need a drink. STAT.

Destruction Tour

2006-01-26T12:34:00.000-08:00

A dear friend who is an expatriate New Orleanian was in town this weekend so we did the obligitory disaster tour. Not the commercial one of course, we just drove around in our car. We call this "Ze Tourre of Diztrucktion" in a bad Alsacian accent, for no particular reason.

Unlike our previous trips though, this time we started at West End Boulevard and drove all the way through the city. We went through the City Park, Mid-City, and Gentilly neighborhoods, then around through the Lakefront area. We drove for a solid hour through block after block of every.single.house destroyed, and we didn't even head out towards New Orleans East or the 9th Ward. The scope of it is just mind boggling. I kept losing track of where I was, because the terrain is so unrecognizable, then suddenly realize I was right in front of a building I used to work in, or a restaurant I ate lunch at a couple of times a week. 80% of a major American city, annhiliated right in front of us.

I'm stunned about the White House canning the Baker Bill, which would have provided funds to the city to purchase destroyed homes from the owners and either redevelop the area or dedicate it to parkland, as a prevention for future flooding. The city's redevelopment plan is actually good, based on solid planning principals used throughout the world. Expecting individual homeowners to rebuild entire neighborhoods is about as practical as paving a street one house at a time.

Back at our house, we had a second adjuster come out on Monday, and he seemed a lot more reasonable than the first guy. We expect to get a revised settlement offer this week. That will be a relief. We still have a case pending with our agent's errors and omissions policy in regards to our flood coverage. I sincerely hope they make us an offer on that one and we don't have to file suit. The lawyer has been a great help on all of this. I'm still waiting to hear from the SBA about the disaster home loan we applied for. I have a month to pay off Countrywide, and I'd like to know we'll be able to borrow the money to fix the house.

Foundation repair: "Only $98K"

2006-01-21T06:42:00.000-08:00

After months of unanswered messages, we finally got quotes for the foundation work to be done if we save the existing house. The job will entail running steel beams the width of the house between the old support piers, jacking the house up a couple of feet, removing the old piers, driving pilings down to bedrock (using some form of the cable-lock system), pouring a new concrete foundation, backfilling the old basement, and pouring a slab for the new parking area and workshop under the house. The general contractor will take care of filling in the walls in the raised area.

This differs from the foundation work we had before the storm, because that repair only jacked up the subsided part of the house and filled in the gap on the old piers. At the time, we reasonably assumed the subsidence had taken place over the eighty year life of the house but that the piers were themselves sound. The sudden shifting of the house during the storm indicates the piers were in bad shape to begin with, and probably were not on pilings.

So, the estimates for the job range from $98K to $150K. We're hoping to get the house fixed for within the insurance payouts we're able to get (i.e, not throw good money after bad) so that would leave us with $100-150K for the new roof and the rest of the work to be done. I've got a volunteer crew coming in to help us gut the more badly damaged parts of the house. We think we can get away without gutting the living, dining, and family rooms.

I'm not ruling out the possibility that we might live in the house eventually, but it's just as likely we'll get it into salable condition and let it go. My insurance premiums for the upcoming year are close to $5K, and they're expected to go up around 25%. When I'm spending more on tax and insurance than I am on mortgage, something clearly has to give.

I am so over New Orleans, I might as well be a blue roof.

2006-01-18T16:19:00.001-08:00

I've had a few people ask me what I think of the mayor's odd comments about New Orleans being a "Chocolate City." My answer - other than being kind of odd, I don't think it's that big of a deal. Nagin has made a hell of an effort to reassure people that the city will revive. Whether you approve of him or not, he's an enormous improvement over the previous mayor who was shockingly corrupt. Nagin's done his best to clean up the corruption, and a lot of people hate him for it.

I'm a lot more bothered by the behavior of my fellow New Orleanians over the past month. First you have the lucky few whose homes were not severely damaged opposing trailers in their neighborhoods for those not so lucky. Then you have people, including members of the city council, claiming that converting some destroyed neighborhoods into green space to prevent future flooding is a tactic to keep African-Americans from returning. Never mind that both black and white neighborhoods are in question, and many black neighborhoods are also targeted for revitalization. Anytime anyone here doesn't like anything, it's a race issue.

Finally, we've got people who are shocked and appalled that the Mayor would acknowledge that New Orleans was and will continue to be a majority black city (albeit in an weird reference to a song by Parliament) but have nothing to say on the matter of shootings taking place at an MLK Day rally. The complacency that allows people to just roll their eyes and say "Oh, that's New Orleans" as if we don't deserve any better has allowed our city to decay for decades, and will keep on doing so despite our first real chance to rebuild since the Restoration.

Y'all are not going to BELIEVE this.

2006-01-13T07:03:00.000-08:00

Got some rain last night. Woke up this morning, thinking, hmm, that rain sounds a little close. I'd better have a look.

Rain water is coming from every light fixture, light switch, smoke alarm, and vent in the apartment. Yes, the apartment, where we live since our house FLOODED. Within about a half hour, there is inch-deep water through the kitchen, bathrooms, laundry area, and hallway. If you step on the carpet in the hallway, it goes sploosh and a wave moves down the hall.

Oh for the love of God. I had an appointment with the new adjuster at the house this morning, but I had to cancel because I need to deal with this mess. We lifted our bed off the floor onto some study boxes so the box spring won't be soaked. The bed frame was wrecked in flood #1.

Anyone know an exorcist? Surely I'm haunted.

Rebuild vs Remodel Quotes

2006-01-06T08:57:00.000-08:00

Mr. Nola had a scary conversation with Boudreaux the Contractor yesterday. By his estimates, we're looking at $300K to renovate, not including the new foundation, vs twice that to rebuild from scratch. This is for a house we paid $360K for a year ago. So far our insurance payouts have been about $270K, and we haven't even added up the cost of the furniture we lost.

Ugh. The temptation to mail the keys back to Countrywide, change my name and move to an alpaca farm in Vermont is getting stronger.

Those numbers represent what Boudreaux thinks we need though, so we'll have to go through and tell him what we actuallly want out of that. Some of the finish work we can do ourselves, of course, but we really don't have the time or skills to take on major work.

Meanwhile, the money we're paying to the lawyer for dealing with our insurance agent is Worth.Every.Penny. I don't know that I could remain civil while talking to the guy. Recently, he told the lawyer that the reason the mold and water damage is so much worse in the rooms that are under the hole in the roof than it is in the rest of the house, is because the house is tilted towards those rooms so they had deeper flood water. "Flood water" is the homeowner's insurance magic excuse to not have to pay for anything. Of course, I have the receipts to show that a) the house was levelled before the hurricane, b) the extent that it was tilted before levelling was towards the other side of the house, and c) the obvious subsidence that took place because of the flood is tilted in the other direction, away from the most damaged rooms. The guy is just making this shit up!

Nothing happens

2005-12-30T22:53:00.000-08:00

I am posting to report that no progress has been made whatsoever. We haven't heard if our SBA loan has been approved. We haven't gotten anyone from FEMA to come document the damage. We haven't gotten a key to the trailer that's been in our yard for over a month. Our request for a second insurance adjuster was denied, so we're waiting for the same guy who lowballed our claim the first time around to give us his second offer. Every month, my mortgage balance gets a thousand dollars higher, since our payments are deferred but the interest isn't.

That banging sound you hear is my head against the wall.

Hilarity ensues

2005-12-17T13:47:00.000-08:00

A couple of weeks ago I got a bill from the electric company for an unusually large sum of money, especially considering we've never lived in the house we're being billed for. Upon reading the fine print, I discovered that in lieu of sending people out to read the meters, which is understandably impractical, our friends at Entergy are billing customers for August based on prior years' use during that time of year. Never mind that we didn't live in our house last year and for all we know the previous owners air conditioned it to 60 degrees all August. I could understand their method, but that due to the renovations going on before Katrina, there hasn't been electrical service at the house since June.

I tried to get through on the customer service line to explain that the estimated billing is not appropriate to our case, but every time I called the message said there would be a minimum of a 30 minute wait, and I'm just not that patient. Finally I emailed them my info, and surprisingly enough, got a reply the next day. Here it is:

Thank you for your inquiry. Because we are unable to get a reading, the billing will remain the estimated amount. If you are able to provide a reading, we will be more than happy to adjust the billing per your reading. The bill below shows we only charged 59.00 for usage incurred. The billing appears extra high due to the increase of the fuel adjustment rate due to the high market cost of fuel. Entergy does not profit in this line item.

Soooo. $59 for what I allegedly used, plus another hundred-something for fuel adjustment? That doesn't even make sense. More importantly, my Entergy friend could probably have seen in my file that our house has a DIGITAL METER. That means if there is no power I CAN'T READ IT.

WTF? There isn't even a line connecting the meter to the house. I just hope they don't report me to TRW, because I am so not paying this bill. What are they going to do, cut off the power to my TRAILER? I'm ][ this close to going off-grid and buying some solar panels to put on the trailer, if we ever get a key to open it, that is.

In other news, we took advantage of Louisiana's sales tax free weekend today to buy a couple of new refrigerators for Chateau Danneel. Our tenants will be able to chill their beers amply when they come back for the spring semester.

Those wacky FEMA guys!

2005-12-14T08:42:00.000-08:00

As I posted a week or so ago, a FEMA trailer appeared in our yard in the night filled with goodies like a coffee maker and a trash can. Oddly, they didn't leave us with a key so we could lock up our newfound treasure. Repeated calls to the guy who reportedly left the trailer were never returned. Anyway, I was at the house on Sunday to look for our Christmas stuff and found that the trailer, mysteriously, has been locked up. We still don't have a key.

I'm really looking forward to stringing some lights on the thing and maybe putting an inflatable Santa on top.

Lawyerin' up

2005-12-12T19:44:00.000-08:00

We met with a lawyer today to talk about our insurance issues, and it looks like we have a good case against our agent for not selling us adequate coverage. With any luck at all, we can file some paperwork and their malpractice insurance will settle with us. Without going into the intricacies of LA law, it's the duty of the agent to make sure the customer knows what level of coverage is recommended and what types of policies are available.

We've been trying to get a quote out of Lafitte the foundation guy for weeks on elevating the house and putting it on a new foundation. This more than anything else will determine whether it will be more expensive to renovate or to rebuild. Even though they just levelled the house before Katrina and already have all the info, I guess they're just so busy they don't want to deal with this one. Tomorrow I'll take a shot at finding another reputable foundation repair company.

While I'm at it, I guess I need to get a structural engineer out to give us an assessment of whether the thing would hold together if we raise it. It's in pretty rough shape. I also want to know - will I ever be able to get level floors, or will they always have a rolling hill effect? Mr. Nola thinks we could salvage the old oak floors and refinish them. I would far rather pull them up, lay a level subfloor, and put down new wood. The question is whether the framing itself can be levelled enough to allow a flat floor.

In general, I'd rather rebuild altogether. I love the look of the old house, but I don't know if it can be fixed to the extent that the walls are plumb and the floors flat. That's not too much to ask for, is it? Cost-wise, it all depends on the difference between pouring the foundation with the house elevated above it, and pouring a foundation on an empty lot and building new framing on top of it. New windows would probably be the biggest single expense after the foundation.

Those of you who've already done this - what did windows cost you? We would have to have real divided-lites or simulated divided lites (like Pella's architect series) rather than fake plastic mullions over a sheet of glass. The surrounding houses were not as badly damaged so they will still be there - fake mullions would stand out like aluminum siding on our street.

I'm really into these windows. I imagine they're incredibly expensive though.

The house has, um, 20 windows on the main floor, and about 10 smaller ones upstairs.

This Old Trailer

2005-11-20T01:06:00.000-08:00

Sorry I haven't posted, I've been dead inside.

About 3 and a half weeks ago I reported that we were about to get a FEMA trailer. Will anybody be shocked to hear that we do not yet have said trailer? Not likely. FEMA has good intentions, and even a lot of money. Just not much for organization. Here is the story thus far:

On Nov. 2 I got a call from a FEMA subcontractor named Justin that they had a trailer for me, I just had to get the yard cleared to place it and find out where the main sewer cleanout is so it could be hooked up. I had to do this in two days, from a couple of hundred miles away, and I had to get into town to sign the paperwork. Ugh. Fortunately, I have a contractor and a checkbook, so my man Boudreaux got the yard taken care of. I called the city Water Board to have them look up the location of the sewer line. They give me some measurements, which I pass on to Justin, everything's cool.

By Friday it's clear that I cannot get back to N.O. to sign anything, as Baby Stella had a doctor's appointment and we were just not ready to leave Houston. Justin, who is really a nice guy who lives on my street, says he can hold onto the paperwork, and that he can't find the sewer drain anyway. I promised to look for it when I got into town the following Monday.

We didn't actually make it back until Wednesday, by which time Justin and Boudreaux have both looked for the missing pipe with no luck. We thought it might be buried under the pile of debris which had just been moved OUT of the yard. Great. I called the city again to check on the measurements, and learn they didn't give me one diminsion: the depth. The damn pipe is buried 4 feet down. (Incidentally, their records say the house was hooked up to the sewer system in 1916, ten years before I thought it was built.)

Naturally, FEMA ain't gonna dig no four foot ditch. Justin advises us to find a plumber who can hook up a pipe to the existing plumbing in the house. At our expense, of course. Finding a plumber in New Orleans right now is like getting a window table at Galatoire's on Mardi Gras day. There is just no way. With some ingenuity, Mr. Nola found a plumber in Atlanta who was planning to come down this week, and agreed to hook us up. However, the house plumbing was disconnected prior to the levelling in July, so he has to get to the main sewer line. So we'd have to dig the hole ourselves. Now Mr. Nola can add ditchdigger to his resume.

That brings us up to date. Mr. N will dig the hole tomorrow, and hopefully the plumber will come on Monday. The debris that we paid $800 to have moved in two days would have been picked up for free by the city this week, but you know, FEMA couldn't wait.

Hey, I changed my name

2005-11-20T00:59:00.000-08:00

Everything is different now, so I'm renaming the blog too. The plans we had to renovate our house pre-Katrina are now totally irrelevant. The work we had done over the summer, about $20K worth, was destroyed. We are starting from near-scratch in planning and decisionmaking. We're not even sure if we're going to renovate the old house or build a new one. On one hand I'd like to sell for whatever we can get and leave, on another thinking about buying the lot behind us to expand our yard. It's a whole new moldy world down here.

Fun with FEMA

2005-11-02T10:26:00.000-08:00

I just got off the phone with a nice man who is a contractor for FEMA, who has a TRAILER with my name on it. Woo and hoo! Actually, I'm not particularly anxious to live in a 250 sq ft trailer in the middle of the toxic dust storm that is New Orleans, but it would give us base camp in town and someplace to store stuff we want to salvage from the house. The trick though is that I have until Friday to get the yard cleared of debris so we can put the trailer on it, and I have to go to N.O. to sign the paperwork. We're about six hours away. If I don't get the lot cleared in time for the trailer to be delivered Friday, it goes back to the warehouse and I get knocked to the bottom of the list.

Fortunately, New Orleans is crawling with workers right now. I just have to find myself one with a bobcat, because the yard's still full of the bricks and demolition debris from the old kitchen. They'll have to dump the stuff out on the sidewalk or on the median, because there's nowhere to take the trash yet, but it would at least by out of my way and the problem of the Army Corps of Engineers instead.

Sorry I've been so long in posting, there just really hasn't been much to say. I went into town for a couple of days last week, it looks like f---ing Baghdad. All of the grass and plants are dead and the trees lost a lot of branches, so it's brown and dusty. Every house has a refrigerator in front of it. The stoplights don't work, but the streets are clear. I walked through the house with Boudreax the contractor, and it has just enough damage that it's a toss-up between trying to salvage the framing and put it up on a new foundation, or clearing the lot and starting over. My vote is for starting over, since that will allow us to rebuild with concrete walls and storm-resistant windows. I have a total crush on insulated concrete form construction.

Oh and word to the wise, stay away from Countrywide mortgage. Trust me on this.

Post-Katrina flood pictures

2005-10-07T21:33:00.000-07:00

Front of the house

I think the house and I feel about the same right now. We don't look that bad, but we're pretty unstable.

Flooding went just a few inches into the main floor of the house. All of the mechanical systems and the wood pier/beam foundation were submerged for about two weeks. Mold is gradually working its way up the walls. In the kitchen where the plaster is off, we can see the mold moving up the studs above where the water was.

Given our daughter's respiratory and immune problems, I'm don't think we will ever feel safe living in the house. I also don't think it makes sense to invest massive repairs on a house with obvious foundation failure. Our hope is that the insurance company will condemn it based on the structural damage so we can tear it down and rebuild. If not, we'll fix it to the extent that insurance will allow and sell it off.

You can see the whole Flickr slideshow at http://www.flickr.com/photos/nola.

Satellite flood pictures

2005-09-15T15:28:00.000-07:00

Thanks to the good folks at MSNBC, there are finally some online flyover images we can zoom in on and get an idea of what is waiting for us. Here is Chateau Danneel, our rental property:

BEFORE THE STORM

AFTER THE STORM

It's looks like it's denuded of trees, but otherwise in pretty good shape. We know from the NOAA flooding data that this block did not flood at all.

On the other hand, here is TOH:

BEFORE THE STORM

AFTER THE STORM

These were taking on 9/11, over a week after the storm, so the flooding is actually lower than it started out. There's a lot of water and some pretty significant roof damage. NOAA tells us the flood depth there was over six feet. If you look at the picture of the front of the house in my profile, you'll see Mr. Nola standing out front - he's about 5'8. So the water was very likely in the main floor of the house.

Standing water on the main floor of the house for over a week means everything - the floors, walls, electrical, HVAC - is shot. I'm not clear on whether or not the wood pier and beam foundation is done for as well. We just have to wait and see if HUD gives us a red tag - condemned - or a yellow tag - damaged but salvageable. Neither is all that appealing. It was really a beautiful house.

Our neighborhood is actually open to residents next week, but we don't plan to return for a while. Stella has medical issues that put her more at risk from mold and pollutants than most people. Although the apartment in River Ridge is okay, it has less to offer than Houston does at the moment.

Clearly, I have a problem

2005-09-08T22:25:00.000-07:00

Hi, my name is Nola, and I am a renovation addict.

We've been encamped in Houston for one week now, and can't stop
ourselves from fixing another kitchen. Our host does not cook much,
but he does entertain. Seriously, there was nothing in his freezer
but martini glasses when we got here. His 80's modern kitchen is
perfect, except the aging euro-style hinges
have come undone and in a few places worn or broken through the front
of the cabinet doors. It's merely cosmetic, but well, Mr. Nola and I
have nothing to do but look at each other, so we're planning to
replace the hinges and where necessary, the doors. Wheee! A project!

Hopefully this will help repay the debt we owe to David for taking us
in. Another, not entirely selfless upgrade we're doing
is buying a small wine chiller from the Home Despot to hold the wine
we brought with us, which we'll leave with David. (How New Orleans
are we? We left our clothes behind but brought the booze.) For
someone who entertains, a wine chiller really is a necessity, after all.

Also good news - Mr. Nola was able to get to the apartment in River
Ridge and salvage our family photos and other items we wished we had
with us. In fact, the apartment complex actually had power and water
on! I'm not going back until I know there won't be a cholera
epidemic, but it's good to know there is someplace for us to stay if
and when he has to return to working on campus. The house, we don't
know exactly, but we're pretty sure TOH has a moderate amount of
water in it. Maybe enough to fill the basement and get into the main
floor. It will probably be a long time, if ever, before we're able
to move into it.

Houses and Home

2005-09-06T22:07:00.000-07:00

We went into Wal-mart last night looking for diapers, and found their entire supply had been sent to "communities affected by Hurricane Katrina." The nerve! I had a strange feeling of vertigo in Wal-mart. It reminded me of the stories they used to tell about Soviet defectors seeing an American supermarket for the first time. All this stuff! Acres of it, and it seemed like it was all stuff I had a month ago and don't anymore. All this cheap, crappy stuff, that I don'’t even care enough about to miss it.

There are a few things, of course, that I care about which I couldn't replace at Wal-mart. Mostly though, I feel like I've spent the past ten years since I graduated from college working to accumulate nothing. It seemed like a lot, but now it's nothing. So what did I accomplish? I felt really good about investing in property. We bought and renovated one home, then rented it out and started working on renovating another. The rental income paid our mortgages and I believed that real estate would be something nobody could take away from me. The market might fluctuate, but over the long run it's stable, and I'd always have someplace to live.

Well, here I am. Living with friends, mortgaged to my eyeballs for two houses in uncertain condition in the middle of the biggest environmetntal disaster in our nation's history. I have one change of clothes and a car I have made exactly ONE payment on since I bought it. But I still feel pretty good. I have someplace safe to stay, and many offers of other places to go if we wear out our welcome here. John and I both have work, at least for now. We have enough money in the bank that we can buy gas for our cars. I'd like to get the family photos back, and my jewelry, but the furniture, etc. really doesn'’t matter.

I do however feel sad about the home we've lost. The reason I've stayed in New Orleans as long as I have is that I have such a strong community of friends, neighbors, and church family. Then in the last year or so we've built a network of medical professionals who saved our daughter's life and surely my sanity any number of times. We might go back and find our houses are more or less intact, but having our community scattered to the four winds is what really makes me feel homeless. It's only a matter of time before I learn of someone I know who didn't make it out of the city. Many of those who did aren't planning to go back. We will miss them.

The city of Houston is full of remarkable people, and I've already found some freelance work, a church, and resources to get Stella back into a therapy schedule. The tough decision now is when to go back. Our apartment in Jefferson Parish is probably intact and we could move in once power and water are back on within a few weeks. John will need to spend time on campus salvaging computers from his department. However, I feel very reluctant to go back to a suburb of nowhere, where we may not have access to any resources or businesses for a long time.

I've tabled plans to go see our parents in California or Buffalo because I want our family to stay together as much as possible. I don't want to send John back to the apartment alone, but I don't see taking the baby there soon either. It's a dilemma. Houston is at least within a day's drive.

What is it with us and water this week?

2005-09-06T21:56:00.000-07:00

My mom says I have a black cloud following me around bringing bad luck. Maybe she's right. Tonight John was getting ready to go back to Jefferson Parish to see what he could salvage from our apartment, when he went into the kitchen to get some water. Whoa did he get water! Somehow the fates chose this particular night, while our host is out of town, for the supply line to the refrigerator to bust, and water to flood the kitchen floor. Said water also crept under the door into the carpeted hallway outside.

This is just the kind of crap that happens when we're around. The key difference this time is that there's a nice man at the front desk we can call to come fix it. Make a note: high-rise apartment. No worries. It rocks.

No news on the status of the houses in N.O. We're just settling in here in Houston until further notice. John keeps text messaging Boudreaux the contractor with no-so-subtle reminders that we'll need his help big time when he's able to go back to work. If anyone knows any contractors of any type looking for work, send them to New Orleans. There will be an ungodly demand for them.

Post-Katrina Update

2005-08-31T16:05:00.000-07:00

We evacuated New Orleans on Saturday to stay with our friends in Baton Rouge. We brought both cars, the pets, some essentials for the baby and a change of clothes for each of us. We didn't expect the storm to be as bad as it was so we didn't really bring much with us, but that is probably just as well as the important thing was to get out of the city quickly.

Baton Rouge got some wind and rain, but nothing like the storm you saw on the news. We lost power there Monday morning when the storm hit, and it hadn't come back on by Tuesday afternoon so we decided to move on to Houston. The lack of air conditioning (and TV) was getting to us. We're now staying with our friend David, in his dee-luxe apartment in the sky in downtown Houston. We're having a nice time here, it's sort of like an unexpected vacation. Houston's zoo and museums have offered free admission to New Orleans refugees so we can have fun playing tourist. Most importantly, it's cool inside.

We plan to stay here for a week or so until we have an idea of how long it will be before we can return to New Orleans. We will not go back until there is power and the public health concerns (snakes, chemicals, etc. in standing water) have been resolved. They might allow residents to go in sometime next week to survey the damage and grab whatever belongings we can. If it looks like we'll be several weeks to months before we can go back safely I will take the baby out to California and John will take the pets to Buffalo. We expect that John will be wanted back at work as soon as possible so he can help get the university's computer systems back online. That would be a good thing, since working equals income. If the university is able to get power, John could sleep in his office.

As of last week, we were living in an apartment in River Ridge, a suburb, while our house uptown was being renovated. We have stuff in storage in the basement of our old house, in a bedroom of the new house, in a storage lot on the west bank, and at the apartment. There's really no telling what might have survived. Uptown apparently had less flood damage than other parts of the city, so it's possible that both the old and the new house are more or less fine. We have no way of knowing what wind damage, trees falling, roof failure, etc. might have occurred. The house on Jefferson already had a hole in the roof and in one wall due to the renovations, so it was vulnerable. We just don't know how the houses survived and if any of our stuff in storage will be salvageable. Looting is evidently also a big problem so what the storm didn't wreck, the scavengers might have.

Our old house, the duplex, is rented to students. I think they'll continue paying rent for a while anyway. We haven't been able to find out if August payroll went through or not. I have no idea if he'll continue to get paid while the university is closed. Since I'm a consultant, there's no chance I'll get paid for any down time. At the moment, we're okay; we have some money in the bank and credit cards. The bigger concern is once we get back and need to start repairing any damage. The way hurricane insurance works, the deductible is a percentage of the home's value. For us, damages will have to be over $25,000 before we can even start to collect insurance. After that our premiums, which are already high, will probably go up a LOT.

I'm sure there will be some FEMA aid and low interest loans to help bridge the gap. Property values will most likely drop after this so if we decide we're through with New Orleans, it will still be a couple of years before we're able to sell without taking a loss. I am hopeful that this catastrophe will help to rebuild the New Orleans infrastructure which has been in terrible shape for years. Maybe we can come out of this stronger and better. It will take a while to get there though.

Watching the news reports is just surreal. I can't get over the idea that they mean us when they talk about REFUGEES and HOMELESS! I'm going with the assumption that it's really not that dire, we're just on vacation and we'll need to replace some broken windows when we get back, and I might get to buy some new furniture. When we finally get to move into Jefferson, I'm having the mother of all housewarming parties, and I'll register at Target for all the crap we need to replace.

Keep on praying for New Orleans. If you've never been there, it's a beautiful city full of gorgeous old homes and stunning centuries old oaks. I can't think of the United States without a New Orleans. Thanks everyone for your kind comments. Fortunately we're a lot better off than many people in the city.

Hurricane Watching and Waiting

2005-08-28T21:20:00.000-07:00

We're settled in with our friends in Baton Rouge watching the news coverage about Hurricane Katrina. We are happy to be safe and comfortable, but can't quite put away the nasty idea that tonight we might lose both houses and everything we own.

I'll just check in here when I know more about what happens next. Mr. Nola and I are weighing our options for each possible outcome. If we find ourselves homeless, I'll probably take the baby out to stay with my parents in California. Mr. Nola's employer will probably have some emergency housing for staff necessary to get the place back up and running. If Chateau Danneel is badly damaged and our tenants can't return, we'll lose about half our monthly income. That will have an adverse affect on our ability to pay the assorted mortgages.

Mr. Nola says: "I've never been homeless before! This should be interesting."

I was telling him about people on the news who were planning to stay on their boats in the fishing community of Houma. His response - "They're gonna die." It's not joke. I can sympathize with those people because their boats are certainly their most valuable assets and probably their livelihood. On the other hand, they are seriously risking their lives, and in some cases their childrens' lives.

It is likely that a lot of people will lose their lives tonight, because they either couldn't or wouldn't evacuate.

God help us all.

Oy, another hurricane

2005-08-26T20:42:00.000-07:00

Aaarrrrrggggghhhh. We're straight in the path of a potentially major hurricane. The guy on the weather channel just said we should use tomorrow to get out of town.

There was supposed to be a lot of activity this week at TOH, but I didn't see any evidence of it when I was over there yesterday. It's still all torn up, the stucco is off the north side of the house, and there's still a big hole in the roof. Perfect hurricane conditions. I swear when we're done with this project the next thing I'm doing is installing a generator and some storm shutters. I'm honestly less worried about the risk of storm damage than I am the hassle of evacuating.

Oh wait. Half of our stuff is stored in the basement at Chateau Danneel. And who knows where the POD company is keeping the other half. Flooding could be a major drag. Everyone use your mental powers to vibe the storm towards Alabama, okay?

News in brief

2005-08-21T10:01:00.000-07:00

I'm so relieved to be done moving out of Chateau Danneel that I've spent the last couple of days hanging around the apartment, lounging by the pool with Stella, and catching up on my HGTV. I'm currently addicted to the show Property Ladder on TLC, where some hapless fool buys a wreck of a house and tries to renovate it to sell for a profit. They always have a totally unrealistic budget and schedule, no skills or experience, and insist on spending their budget on things like marble tile instead of say, plumbing. The kicker is that somehow, they almost always succeed at turning a profit, despite their total ineptitude. The whole thing lends some credit to the warnings about a real estate bubble.

Most of the work at TOH has happened outside this week. They moved the air conditioner compressor into the back yard to get it out of the way, and poured the footing for the new wall. The stucco has been torn off the outside of the old wall, and the studs from the interior wall between the kitchen and breakfast room are gone. It still looks like a great dusty pile of disaster, but at least we're almost done with demolition and should start getting some actual construction soon. Boudreaux says it'll be six weeks, but I think that's like the "two weeks" running joke in The Money Pit.

I got a better look at the flooring, and we've got vinyl on subfloor on top of vinyl on subfloor, on top of planks running diagonally over the support beams. I think we'll go down to the planks and put in new wonderboard and porcelain tiles.

Leveling finished... sort of

2005-08-17T08:54:00.000-07:00

Once the process of jacking up the house started, it went very quickly. We got the call the next day to come check it out and give the approval to fill in the gaps and close it up. It's very dramatic from the outside; there's about a six inch gash in the stucco running the length of the side of the house. The contractor jacked it up as much as he could before the house started showing signs of stress. (We cannaugh lift her much higher, cap'n, she's given everthin' she's got! RIP, Scotty) Inside, the change is more subtle, there are still some waves in the floor, but much better than it had been. The tilt is no longer the first thing you notice when you walk to the back of the house.

I was a little disappointed that it wasn't a miracle cure that would give us perfectly level floors. But, well, it's an old house. We just move on and call it character. Sadly, the guest bathroom was the sacrificial lamb for the leveling - the tile floors and tub surround are cracked pretty badly. I'm starting to fantacize about black and white mosaic floors like this:

More specifically, I'm wondering how hard it would be to do the floor myself. My DIY expertise so far is limited to painting and hanging wallpaper or window treatments. What do y'all think?

Movin' out

2005-08-17T05:33:00.000-07:00

Progress or lack thereof at TOH has actually been less on our minds for the last two weeks while we've been moving out of Chateau Danneel and trying to get it ready for our new tenants. Moving sucks. Moving in August really sucks. Moving in August in New Orleans is a punishment fit for the guy who wrote Jar Jar Binks into Star Wars episode 1.

We've filled about 50,000 boxes. Some of them moved into the POD parked in our driveway, some of them went into the basement, and some to the apartment we're renting. What makes moving EXTRA fun is knowing we'll get to do it again in a couple of months.

In addition to the POD, we rented a U-Haul to move our junk out to the apartment. We also used it to move some furniture into storage at TOH, since the POD's full. The apartment is actually quite nice, in a bland corporate sort of way, and it has BIG closets. I could seriously get used to the closet space. We requested a one bedroom, but they only had a two bedroom unit available so we're getting it at the one bedroom rate. Luckily the nice lady in the office left the door to the second bedroom unlocked so we can stash boxes in there, as well as a computer desk. Stella's crib fits nicely in the closet of the master bedroom, so it's like her own little alcove.

In the week before our tenants moved in, we had the floors in two rooms refinished, painted one of the bedrooms, touched up paint everywhere, built a "message center" in the hallway, and finished up a lot of trim that we'd not bothered with for ourselves. There are pictures, but I have to find the cable to get them off my camera. I have to say, it looks damned good. With all of our junk out and the little details finished, it's a really nice place. It was in sorry shape when we bought it, and I'm proud of what we've done there.

The day the tenants arrived felt like sending my eldest child off to college. The unruly one, who defied all attempts at reformation and gave us many sleepless nights, but somehow turned into a really neat person nonetheless. We'd been there until 11:00 pm the night before, Stella sleeping on a mat on the floor, but the tenants were pleased with our work.

Fun with contractors

2005-08-17T05:26:00.000-07:00

Ack, it's been a while since I've checked in. We've been in moving hell. I have tons to update though! Forgive the serial posts.
The last time I postedly, we were waiting for Lafitte the shoring man to get his guys back to work leveling the house. After a week long holdup, we finally hired our own plumber to disconnect the pipes under the house so the rest of the job could resume. It was about three hours of work on a Friday afternoon.

So Monday morning we get a call from Lafitte's site manager, Alan, who seems to think he's doing us an enormous favor by doing his job. Now, they've discovered a heating duct that needs to be disconnected, and we need to get someone else out to do it. Mr. Nola reminded him that we're replacing all the ductwork anyway, so it wouldn't matter if the crew damages it, they should just rip it out and move ahead. At most, disconnecting the duct would take about an hour.

At this point Alan replied that HIS guys don't do that, and he wouldn't want to WASTE THEIR TIME. It's kind of fun when Mr. Nola gets mad. He's normally so friendly that it comes as a surprise when he starts looking like Lou Ferigno and spewing expletives. He didn't actually cuss Alan out, he just reminded Alan that we'd already had a week of OUR time wasted and we were the ones writing the checks. Then he called Alan's boss.

Somehow, the duct got disconnected, and if the shoring crew were disgusted that we were misusing their skills, we didn't hear about it. The jacking of the house proceeded on Monday as planned.

It's getting hot in here, let's take off all our clothes.

2005-07-29T18:52:00.000-07:00

You know, it's a little warm in New Orleans right now. By "a little warm," I mean that's what Satan would say if he came up from hell to grab some pralines from the Gumbo Shop. "It's a little warm," he'd say, "is the air conditioning on?"

So we're moving into a corporate apartment because TOH isn't ready for habitation and our tenants are moving into Chateau Danneel on the 15th. We've got a POD in our driveway to stash the furniture and extra junk, and next week we'll get a U-Haul trailer to move our necessities to the apartment. Yes, we're such slaves to our possessions we need a U-Haul for just our immediate needs, not including furniture. It's related to having a baby. The apartment is costing us three arms and two legs, but it will be convenient and safe. Plus, they have a pool! Woo, we'll live the life of suburban luxury for a few weeks.

Stella and I checked out a very nice sublet in a charming downtown neighborhood, which would have been great if we didn't have cats and a baby. Poor Stella was having a bad day, and threw up down my shirt as we walked in the door. I think it was a sign. The gentleman who owned the place, a confirmed bachelor you might say, was totally unphased and graciously offered me a paper towel. Nonetheless, all of his precious antiques and objets d'art would have taken too much of a risk if we stayed there, so we had to decline.

Then rather than get throwup on the seat belt in Mr. Nola's car, I took my shirt off and drove home with a hand towel thrown over the girls. Of course, Chateau Danneel is across the street from a high school, so I had to put the shirt back on to get out of the car rather than expose myself to a bunch of innocent kids. Just another day in the life.

The Collecting of the Boxes

2005-07-28T07:53:00.000-07:00

I've been scouring the neighborhood for boxes. Usually I see them all over the place, but since I'm getting ready to move, karma is messing with me. Murphy too, it seems, since after I finally went and bought a bunch of boxes from the box factory down the street, a friend introduced me to her new coworker who JUST moved here and has TONS of boxes and packing material to get rid of. Humph.

So now my house is like a cardboard jungle. It's a recycler's dream, or maybe nightmare. I think I made the Collecting of the Boxes into a way to avoid the matter of packing itself. Since the storage pod arrives tomorrow, and we're moving into our sublet next week, it's time to get packing. Last night I packed 12 boxes of books, and only empties two of the six shelves on the library wall.

Why are we doing this again?

Finally, a plumber. But where is Lafitte?

2005-07-28T07:47:00.000-07:00

After about a week of the various contractors looking at each other saying "I dunno, what do YOU want to do?" We finally took matters into our own hands and chased down a plumber to detach the pipes under the house so the shoring can proceed. Time and materials for our plumber Jay were $225. Of course, in the meantime, Lafitte's shoring crew has moved on to another project, so we're stuck waiting around for their return.

I'm not sure if it's good news or not, but we found out that the damage to the wood around the old chimney was due to rot, not termites. Obviously there was a problem with the flashing around the chimney and water came in and ate away at the beams. So, we fix the beams, and hope the roof repair over the hole will take care of it. At least we don't need to tent the place. On the other hand, last night I had a nightmare about finding water gushing from the ceilings during a small rainstorm and having to replace the entire roof. What's even scarier is that it's not impossible.

Electric Mayhem!

2005-07-19T13:36:00.000-07:00

Wouldn't demolition be more fun if the contractors looked like this?

I was thinking about Animal's band, Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem, when I was over at TOH today sniffing around the electrician. I don't know how the order of operations is decided, but Boudreaux's got his electric guy moving the circuit box to a new *legal!* location and upgrading the service to the house.

When we had the house inspected prior to purchase, our electrician Sam discovered a whole new level of electric mayhem. Sam is older than dirt and slow as molasses, but he's cheap and he knows his stuff. I knew bad news was coming when he came out of the basement shaking his head. It turns out that somehow, the house had a NEW 200 amp circuit breaker, which was being fed by a 100 amp main breaker outside, which in turn was being fed by a 60 amp meter box . I don't know much about electricity, but I take it this is the equivalent to plugging a 220 volt dryer into a 110 volt outlet, but the dryer is actually the entire house. Hmmm. Also of interest is that the 100 amp breaker could only be opened by taking a saw to the railing for the porch stairs.

Sam laughed and said there was no way this set up ever passed inspection. He also found a bunch of outlets that had three-pronged receptacles but were not actually grounded. I suspect that some former owner got rooked by a shady contractor when this set up was put in. Since Mr. Nola and I each run multiple computers, televisions, air conditioning and eventually an assortment of kick-ass cooking appliances, decent electrical service is mandatory. Once the guys over there today are done, we should be ready to go. Of course, there's still the matter of old knob-and-tube wiring, but we'll just cross that bridge when we come to it.

Demolition Pictures!

2005-07-19T13:02:00.000-07:00

Kitchen bits in the family room -

You can see where the chimney used to be by the square in the framing - but look at the termite eaten wood and the beams to nowhere! That's really not good.

There's the hole in the floor from the chimney -

What used to be the kitchen from what used to be the breakfast room -

The remnants of the porch from the kitchen -

The guys outside replacing gas lines on our street -

Dueling Contractors

2005-07-16T20:15:00.000-07:00

So while Boudreaux's guys tackle the demolition, Lafitte's crew is getting the house ready to jack back up to level. Meanwhile, there's a city crew outside running new gas lines on our block. I could park a sandwich truck in front of my house and probably do very nicely.

Despite having a plethora of men with trucks around, somehow nobody claimed the job of disconnecting the plumbing before the house gets shored. Since the pipes run in the crawl space under the house, moving the house, will mean adjusting the plumbing so it doesn't break or knock out a wall or something. For reasons I have not learned, Lafitte's contract did not include the plumbing work. Boudreaux's just in charge of the kitchen, so there's no reason he'd have planned to handle the plumbing for the bathrooms. Anyway, Boudreaux has a plumber on the job, so we'll get him to do it - at an additional cost, of course.

I'll be so excited to see the house level though. I really hope all the plaster doesn't crack.

Why I'm not DIM.

2005-07-16T19:46:00.000-07:00

Seeing the amazing progress made by others at the Houseblogs Webring makes me a bit embarrassed that the only hand I'm lifting at TOH is to write a check. Well, we'll paint once the drywall is up, but that's about it.

My excuses are thus:

1) We have a baby. A special needs baby at that, so one of us needs to be playing/feeding/otherwise paying attention to her pretty much all the time. I can't very well put her in a playpen and bust out a wall with a sledgehammer.

2) We're doing major construction that we just don't have the time, skills, or tools to do. Shoring, foundations, bumping out an exterior wall and extending the roof - these are not lightweight jobs. Like the lawyer who represents himself having a fool for a client, we'd be fools to try this stuff ourselves.

3) We're not good at it. Back in the days we rented, Mr. Nola and I used to watch HGTV - "the construction channel" as we called it (in a Russian accent for some reason) - and we really thought we could buy one of these neat old New Orleans places and be just like Bob Vila. Sadly, we discovered actually doing construction projects on Saturday morning was a whole lot harder than watching them on TV. And I'm kind of afraid of power tools. So the work on our first house, which was admittedly WAY more than we should have taken on, stretched on for an eternity. Actually, we're still finishing some of the stuff we started, um, eight years ago.

Now that we have a child, we can't mess around with having gaping holes in the walls for months at a time. And I don't want it. I want to move into an intact structure. Plus, it's fun to go over and see what's happening without having to get all dirty myself. Maybe I lack the Puritan work ethic that made this nation great. But then, I'm giving work to lots of guys - so I'm contributing to economic growth, right?

Should it be raining in here?

2005-07-16T19:27:00.000-07:00

There's been CRAZY activity over at TOH this week - and my dang camera ran out of juice so I don't have pictures. I'll get over there tomorrow to get some new ones.

Boudreaux's crew has finished the interior demolition on the kitchen, so we can now get a sense of the space with the walls opened up. We discovered some dead space behind the wall in front of the chimney with a LIVE outlet in it - someone along the line built out the wall so they'd have a straight run of counter, but didn't disconnect the power to the old outlet. The kitchen was SO small it's hard to imagine anyone closing off space on purpose. We've also seen more fun lime greet paint and some of the old linoleum.

Tropical Storm Cindy - which the local news has said was a hurricane after all - blew the patch off the roof where Lafitte's crew took out the old chimney. That left us with a very large hole in the middle of the roof, while Hurricane Dennis moved in this direction. Fortunately Dennis hit Pensacola instead, but it was still kind of troubling that once the ceiling was taken out in the kitchen, we could see right up and out, as well as down into the basement.

I was over there a few days ago to meet with a floor refinisher and checked out our big hole. It was drizzling at the time, and raindrops were clearly falling through the kitchen into the basement. Strangely, I just found it kind of interesting rather than alarming. I mean, it's all a mess right now anyway, right? But I did discover a new problem that's going to cost us: the wood beam exposed by the hole in the roof clearly has termite damage. In New Orleans, termite damage isn't exactly a shock, but depending on its extent, it can create a nightmare of carpentry. Since it only has to hold up the roof, I'm counting on Boudreaux to be able to fix this spot without ripping off the entire roof and replacing all the framing.

The Writing on the Wall

2005-07-10T13:39:00.000-07:00

The writing is on the wall, both literally and figuratively.

The contractors have started demolition and the walls have been marked for which ones to take down. We found old stucco under the drywall in the breakfast room. A lot of people around here have dealt with damaged plaster or stucco by drywalling over it. You lose some depth to your trimwork, but it gives great sound insulation from room to room. Here are some pictures:

The doorway through the kitchen from the breakfast room.

Wow, you've got to love that color combination. Bright red walls with electric lime baseboards. The interior of the built-in cabinets were lime too. Yowza.

The kitchen sink on the original exterior wall of the house, looking through window to enclosed porch.

The bar sink on the enclosed porch, next to the refrigerator.

In the figurative sense, the writing is telling us that it's mid-July, we have to move in three weeks, and That Old House is not going to be fit for habitation. We have to find an apartment to sublet for a month or two. That will be my project for the week ahead, along with getting the storage POD sent out and start packing our junk into it.

When it rains, it pours

2005-07-07T20:05:00.000-07:00

Tropical Storm Cindy knocked out the power at Chateau Danneel for about 16 hours, leaving us hot and bored and grouchy. Now we're watching Hurricane Dennis and hoping he stays on track to hit to the east (sorry, Pensacola!)

The storms have delayed demo over at That Old House, but it's probably for the best that the side of the house has not been ripped off before a hurricane. There's a run on plywood and generators at the Home Depot, and we're planning to evacuate if necessary. I'm not so worried about storm damage, but hanging out for days with no power while the lines are down is the opposite of fun.

And in the category of "when it rains, it pours," Baby Stella lost her pacifier at the Sam's Club, and has refused all substitutes. Add a terrrible rash from some kind of bug bite to a binky-less status, and we've got one unhappy kid. And if Stella ain't happy, ain't nobody happy.

Have you seen this binky? Cash reward offered!

July Already?

2005-07-01T21:02:00.000-07:00

So we now have one month to get That Old House safe for habitation. That involves ripping off the old enclosed porch, building a new exterior wall, extending the roof to the new wall, tearing out the old wall, replacing the heater and ductwork, moving the electrical service and running wiring to new kitchen, plumbing the new kitchen, etc etc. OK, it's not all getting done in a month. But how much is enough? Should I just find an apartment now?

Boudreaux the Contractor got the first big check today for the kitchen job. He'll get permits Tuesday and start demo on Wednesday. Lafitte will be continuing the shoring work on the rest of the house while the kitchen gets demolished. The yard looks like a, well, construction site with the debris from the chimney and shoring strewn about, not to mention the three large holes dug by the gas company. At least it's fenced and not visible from the street.

Cheers and happy Fourth from the Nola family.

Meanwhile, back at the Chateau...

2005-06-30T20:55:00.000-07:00

I didn't make it over to That Old House today, as I had other business to attend to, including selling my car. We're a one-car household for a week or so until my new Mini Cooper arrives at the dealership. Woohoo! If you're wondering how I can afford a new car while renovating a house, it's actually all a part of the financial voodoo. By selling my 2003 Mini, and leasing a new one, I can get a spankin' new car and lower payments to boot. Of course, I'll have no car in three years, but honestly, judging from my first Mini, I don't want to deal with one of these quirky Brits once she's out of warranty.

Meanwhile, back at Chateau Danneel, I've got to start getting ready to move and it's looking pretty ugly. We have a couple of unfinished projects that we long ago gave up on (sigh) that have to finally be dealt with. When we were redoing the kitchen, the idea of stained glass transoms above the pocket doors to the dining room sounded great. Five years later, they're still just unfinished holes, and if I didn't get the glass made for me, I'm not doing it for my tenants either. Better find my spackle trowel.

Holes

2005-06-29T18:46:00.000-07:00

By coincidence, the water company is replacing the gas lines along our street this week. We learned about this yesterday, about twelve hours before they started digging up the sidewalk. Thanks guys! So not only we do have one crew inside the house making holes in the roof and walls, there's another crew outside digging holes as well. It's like gopher heaven.

The chimney is almost gone, from the house at least. It's still present in brick pile form in the backyard. I hadn't expected them to go through the wall in the attic stairs, but I can see why they had to do so. I guess we will be painting that room after all.

I hate seeing dirt tracked through the house, but I know it's inevitable. I think I'd better tape some cardboard down over the floors this weekend, before they get any more damaged.

Here are some highlights of the hole tour:

That one looks like something out of Blair Witch, eh?

And finally, our very own pile of bricks:

A big pile of bricks!

2005-06-28T08:47:00.000-07:00

This afternoon there's a big pile of bricks in the yard, from the soon-to-be excised chimney. Yay, construction!

We're under a lot of stress to get the house livable as soon as possible. We have tenants moving in at Chateau Danneel on August 15, so we really need to be out by the first of that month so we have time to get the place ready for its new inhabitants. With work on That Old House starting so late in the summer, I'm pretty anxious about having someplace safe to move into. If it were just Mr. Nola and I, we could handle living in a construction zone, but with baby Stella at home with me during the day, living on-site isn't going to work out.

We're weighing the options, but there's a good chance I'll just take Stella and leave for a few weeks at the end of August. We could rent an apartment for a while, but would prefer to avoid the expense. I'll feel bad leaving Mr. Nola to fend for himself onsite, but on the other hand, leaving New Orleans in August is always a good idea.

There are no secrets in New Orleans

2005-06-27T10:20:00.000-07:00

Met up with Lafitte the leveling guy today over at That Old House. He took a check from us, and said they'll start work on the chimney tomorrow and it'll be gone by the end of the week. The resulting hole in the roof will be temporarily patched until we have the roof extension put on. Gaping holes in roof during hurricane season make me a bit nervous, but at least the channel it will leave through the house is between two walls.

They start on the roof with a sledgehammer and work their way down to the roofline, then in the attic, then they'll go down to the basement and take out the bottom of the chimney. The last bit between the walls on the main floor will probably be knocked out from underneath, but if they have to go through the kitchen wall they can - it'll come out later anyway.

Why bother taking out the chimney? 16 crucial square feet in the kitchen, for one thing. The other is that the mortar is crumbling and it's not safe to use for its intended purpose, venting the furnace. Not to mention its unintended function of holding the center of the house higher than the rest of the house around it. At the current house, Chateau Danneel, we left a similar chimney stack in place when we redid the kitchen and I've always wished we just got rid of it when we could have.

Lafitte's family have been shoring up New Orleans houses for six generations - back to 1840. We were lucky to find him. When we were in the inspection period one week before closing on the house, I was madly trying to get quotes from contractors on what necessary repairs would cost. The leveling contractor recommended to us didn't show up for two appointments, and we needed a quote fast. Mr. Nola opened the phone book and called the first name on the list, which happened to be Lafitte.

When Lafitte came over, I walked him through the house, and asked if he wanted to see the basement. "That's okay," he told me, "I know the house."

He KNEW the house? It turns out that this was the very guy that the previous owners had called for an estimate. HA! This meant that I would have the same information as the sellers about what it would cost to fix. Aha! This, friends, is the nature of New Orleans. Everyone knows everyone else. Every contractor has either worked on every house, or bid on the job. There are no secrets.

Some "before" shots of the kitchen

2005-06-26T17:34:00.000-07:00

These were taken when we toured the house before we bought it. It looks kind of cute, really, it's just very small. So small, in fact, that the refrigerator is located on an enclosed porch adjacent to the kitchen.

Our plan is to merge the three small rooms comprising the kitchen, porch, and breakfast room into one big eat-in kitchen. There is also a formal dining room, so a separate breakfast room is really unnecessary. The exterior wall of the house, which divides the existing kitchen from the enclosed porch, is going to be bumped out to not quite where the porch ends now.

You can DO that? or, Fun with Foundations!

2005-06-25T23:16:00.000-07:00

Mr. Nola met today with Boudreaux the Contractor over at the house to review the plan for this week. After many months of planning, we finally will have someone lift a hammer. The first phase of the project is to hoist up the side of the house that has subsided and bring the floors back to level.

New Orleans is a geologically unstable place, a city built on a series of swamps. At the end of our street you can see the Mississippi River levee loom over the buildings in front of it, and ships float along on the other side that appear to be flying. We are below sea level, below the river level even, and prone to flooding. The silty soil is notoriously unreliable, and some parts of the city just have their own ways of reminding us of our foolish choices in settlement.

Ironically it was actually a drought that caused much of the subsidence in our house and many of the others in our neighborhood. Without the usual onslaught of rain one year, the ground dried deeper than it should of and many of the old foundations shifted or settled. If you're lucky your house might subside evenly or just have a sort of ladylike lilt in the floorboards. Ours, well, it's more like a drunken swagger.

Part of the house is built over a cellar, and part of it is over the traditional pier and beam foundation. Naturally, the two parts didn't settle at the same rate, so now the left side of the house tilts rather dramatically towards the outside. It doesn't look as noticeable when it's furnished, but when the house is empty it sort of feels like a Salvador Dali painting. The difference in height from the low point of the house to the high point is about five inches.

On Monday, they'll begin the leveling process by removing an old chimney stack that isn't in use and partially holds the center part of the house higher than everything else. Getting rid of the chimney will also free up a good chunk of space in the kitchen. After the chimney's gone they'll place jacks all around the house and lift it up, repair the piers, build up the ones that are shorter, then lower the house back in place. It sounds crazy, doesn't it? But every house in this city gets it done at one time or another. It's like getting a new roof. The whole shebang will cost about $20K.

Inaugural Post

2005-06-24T19:50:00.000-07:00

All this will not be finished in the first 100 days. Nor will it be finished in the first 1,000 days, not in the life of this Administration, nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin.
- JFK, Inaugural Address, 1960

I am the kind of person realtors hate. I go to every open house in the neighborhood - peering in closets, checking out the photos on the refrigerator, sizing up the furnishings and the age of the appliances. I consider it my business, as I am a property owner, after all, to stay up to date with the local housing market. I like to know who's coming or going, and why, and if they have any nice antiques that might show up in a yard sale. I'm not entirely wasting their time, I've always thought that if the right thing came along at the right time... well you'd never know.

And that's how we found this one. Bucolic, right? A charming craftsman cottage with yellow paint and a cheerful blue door, she resides on a gentile avenue in Uptown New Orleans. It's huge - 3000 sq ft counting the finished attic, has a backyard, nice sized rooms, and off street parking for two cars inside an automatic gate. Parking in this area is a rare amenity, and one of the first things Mr. Nola and I admire in any house.

When I went in, the house had been on the market for six months. It was priced competitively for the area - $395K, down from an original asking price of $415K. Parts of Uptown have houses selling at over $200 per square foot, so anything under $500K that isn't in a ghetto and is over 2000 square feet is a pretty good deal. It was also very pretty. Decorated for the holidays, one could easily imagine having big family dinners in the traditional double parlor, tucking les enfants in bed after hanging their stockings by the marble fireplace. It was like one of those Lands End Christmas photo shoots.

So why was it on the market for so long? Well, it had one small problem. Small meaning 13x8, to be exact. It was the kitchen. How a house this size made it to 2004 with a 104 square foot kitchen I do not know. I believe the previous owners all looked at the situation and decided the wisest thing to do was move. Mr. Nola and I, on the other hand, looked at it and saw a challenge.

Six weeks later I was handed the keys, for a pretty fair final price of $350K. This required some significant financial voodoo and the promise of all my organs once I'm done with them, but at any rate, it's ours. Having had a traumatic experience in the past with living in a house during a kitchen renovation - a sad story for another day - we planned to have everything that needed to be done DONE by the time we moved in.

It is now 5 months later and we are getting close to the date we have to vacate our current home, Chateau Danneel, for our new tenants. Before they move in, we have to get some repairs done at Chateau Danneel, so there will be projects going on at two locations for a few weeks. Over at That Old House, after five months of haranguing the architect and shopping for contractors, work is finally about to begin.