Salvage/Excavation Finished

Here's a little before and after for ya. Willie White and his guys picked the rubble apart by hand and it's done. There are numerous posts and millwork pieces I have saved. Also window casings which will help so that we can match them or remill them. The ironwork is in the pod, which we now refer to as 'the office'.

We debated whether or not to pull up the floors and we are going to attempt to wait for a variety of reasons. One good reason to keep them is that it keeps the footprint solid and also avoids the need for an industrial container. The risks are water and thieves but I have a lot of eyes and ears in the neighborhood. These tarps are very thick and with some tweaking, should be
good enough. The grass is pretty ripped up so the good news is that I won't have to mow for a while.

The next big thing is the insurance settlement. We are still waiting for Lloyds to send some sort of number to us that we will most likely reject. We'd love to get in there and get back to work, as many property owners in New Orleans would like to do but the sluggish response from the insurance companies are causing a huge bottleneck in the rebuilding process.

Gables Come Down

The Gables came down today. Wow, what a process . . .this is the only time Willie has had to use a power tool. All the rest has been taken down with crowbars. Eve, NPR reporter, came by, all excited. "This is a huge story!", she said. She has been researching all the aspects of preservation and salvage. It is fascinating and an industry unto itself. The interview should be on NPR later this week. It's beginning to feel pretty sad that my house will be gone. Well, it will be in a giant box.

Sorry if the photos are wacked, I had a heck of time with that part today.

The Treasures

So my neighbors, 4 of them, who are affected by my fallen house, had to be notified of the excavation so they can tarp, etc. Not surprisingly, only one person called.
Gladys Phillip.
She just wanted to know if my insurance was going to pay to fix her house. . . . I was waiting for these calls. I told her I would ask my adjuster and would do what I could to toss some
corporate cash in her direction.
No go. Gladys didn't have insurance. Pensioner,
has paid the house off years ago. I did tell her about the PRC's rebuilding together program but that was the best I could offer. She asked me if I could tarp her roof or something and Willie did mention he would do his best to seal the affected homes. So, I underpromised, overperform. That's my M.O. anyway.

The majority of the floor has been uncovered. The boards are way warped. Don't know if they, the very most valuable part of the house, can be reused. However, these tiles around the fireplace are intact in the the 4 fireplaces that had this original detail. Willie has also retrieved the millwork, some windows. It's really fascinating and surprising what survived !

The Autopsy

The work of picking apart the house has started. Willie White is the best in the biz. He was recommended to me by the Dir. of the LA Landmarks Society and he really is great. He got my permits through the back-door in one day and is fine with me keeping some of my own wood rather than pressuring me to sell it to him. Some I will let him have, some I will keep and some I will donate to the Green Project. I am giving some tiles to a friend so he can patch his roof and they have a large pile of maybe 1500 bricks they have salvaged already. NPR did an interview with Willie and I about salvage, I hope it makes it to the air. He did a great job, I want to hear it.

There is an unscrupulous band of architectural raiders who steal this stuff from people's houses and a master pirate who pays people for these stolen items. So we are pretty worried about our
stuff over there being stolen. I am on the task of getting an industrial container for the wood which could be on our property for months before we can rebuild.

I have to head to the restaurant and am always under some sort of thing to do so I apologize for
the brevity today. I want to tell you about the damage to the neighbors....remind me.

More Blogging ......

This blog has earned me a spot on Metroblogging ! It's hard doing both blogs and besides, working at the restaurant along with the volunteering stuff I have been doing, it's making
it hard to do anything regarding the house itself. Plus, we still have nothing in writing from the insurance company so it 's a war. I am not the only one. Much of the city is in limbo for this same reason.

So to keep up, here's the link: http://neworleans.metblogs.com/ It's linear, you can cruise the
articles for mine through the link on the left for the archives pertinent to the current month.
If you forget the link, just search blogs new orleans, it comes up. Don't be a retard and ask me a million times for the link...it's called a bookmark, if you can't use it yet, check into a nursing home.

I was approached by Mercy Corps to help salvage my item of desire from the home, then let them keep some wood for reuse through the Green Project here in the city. In this deal, they
would do the excavation for free. However, they can't touch the asbestos shingles. This is so ridiculous and it causing a lot of problems for many homeowners. As one person put it, "asbestos shingles are eating the lunches of a lot of contractors right now." If I could get up there I would pick them off myself. The whole thing is utterly stupid. The absurdity makes me just want to leave it. No one cares.

I did commmission my very dear friend, Jason Hawkins to do a painting of the house. He's not going to do the end result nor the blighted state, somewhere in between. He paints all kinds of
houses in New Orleans and has a degree in preservation. His work is on display all the time
at La Crepe Nanou and is for sale. Since the storm, his stuff is moving !

"Jason London Hawkins is a native of North Carolina and a New Orleanian since 1995. An ardent preservationist, Hawkins lives in the restored former residence of Kid Ory, Louis Armstrong's mentor and a leading jazzman of his day. His paintings are mostly of famous churches, whorehouses and gothic mansions. "http://www.bestofneworleans.com/dispatch/2005-07-26/art_review.php

Uptown Askew, Uptown Anew

The building on the left is at the tipping point. It's so blighted that one small breeze is going to bring it down. This building is located on a hoppin' stretch of Magazine street, it's right across from Whole Foods. The window casings are all bent, it's a real life Michalopoulos. Check out his stuff here: http://www.michalopoulos.com/gallery.html

The photo on the right is the pocket park at Toledano and St. Charles. The neighborhood took it upon themselves to clean it up on Saturday. One man paid for a dumpster or two and everyone came out and got rid of all the tree debris and trash. It's so beautiful. We can't wait around for the city to maintain public areas here in the city so folks are doing a great job of doing things for themselves. The area was a dumping ground for the last month, this is such an enormous
improvement. I sure am glad the residents were able to come home and pitch in. It took about
10 people the whole day to get it done.

Excavators and Adjusters: the renovation revisited

So I have met with an adjuster, who was very nice and he told me that we would probably get close to the entire amount of our policy as this was trully destroyed. He then drew up an estimate that was about half of our policy amount. Now, this is not a half destroyed home....it's a totally destroyed home. We did not
pay only half of our premium. We are furious.

This week I lucky enough to get an excavator/salvage guy to come out and tell me what we could and should save. I have to attempt to contact the owners of the 4 other homes the house has fallen on before we can begin work. We need their permission to enter the property and some will need to get tarps on their roofs. This will not be easy. They are not there. Ever. Then I have to get a permit. Then they can begin picking this mess apart.
Someone will buy some of that old wood and later, I suppose I will be buying some of it back.

I have a feeling we will be making some big alterations in the scope of this 'renovation'. I may just do a smaller house without the camelback, I may go with those new metal roofs (pictured) on my friend Meg's down the street. They held up the best in the storm. And they make them in copper! Imagine that ~

Le travail quotidien

Jill and Eva came to town to do some work on their homes. Things went really well ! Jill got
some major things done like cleaning up her yard, getting a new water heater, meeting with an adjuster. It was a very productive 6 days.

We toured the damaged areas of the city and saw the giant debris heap on Ponchartrain Expwy~ whew.

When they first arrived, like most people, they were pretty overwhelmed by what they saw. It was just a matter of days, however, before they were passing thru neighborhoods saying, "oh, this is looking so much better!". I had to laugh at this transition because we all swing very heavily between the emotions that accompany this shift in our perspective and many of us feel like we don't know for sure if we are ok with how we
feel about the city. Good, hopeful one minute, tired, fed-up, disgusted, exhausted, wondering if it's worth all the work, where is everyone?, who are all these people?, proud, indignant to those not here helping to get our services up . . . it's a wide gamut of emotions. With every friend we see again, we feel happy and reassured. I am putting a curse on everyone who bails on us right now. Sissies can just stay away. It's totally doable and it's not infinite and it's not dangerous unless you're stupid.

A fine example of daily life in New Orleans right now happened this morning. First, there are
3 coffee shops open uptown. One has no espresso, he is waiting for a new one to arrive, his
shop was looted. Each day I go to the one near me and I get and iced breve. Today, he has almost no half-n-half. I am tired. I put my head down and just order the espresso and figure I can just go buy some half-n-half at the store. Instead, I went and bought about 5 jugs and brought it back to the coffee shop because I know what it is like from my filling in at La
Crepe Nanou......you don't even have the staff to get supplies sometimes. Turns out that his
dairy man, a local distributor, Brown's Velvet, somehow shorted his shipment. That guy is probably working overtime too, so he's probably exhausted like the rest of us who are really
pitching in to help local businesses get back up and running in addition to our friends and our own homes. It's cars on a cable and some folks don't get it. I do, and I will be getting some free
coffees I am sure, they really appreciated it.

Some guy was giving the manager of CC's on Jefferson such a hard time this morning because they aren't able to be open on Sunday! What a jerk! Grab an apron, asshole. Help them, don't yell at the poor man. He is bringing employees in from Baton Rouge to help have the coffee shop
open 6 days a week and we should be thankful.

I see a lot of people who seem to have the time to sit in the coffee shop and linger. Boy, those were the days!

And those local folks who were always like, "you're not FROM here", meaning you weren't born here. Well, there are some of those "local" people who aren't here either and I can't wait to run into them some night! They can never say that again, I will kick them right back to their silly little high-school.

In an effort to give you a complete picture of the current status of things, another example is that at La Crepe, we can't offer a full menu because the two chefs and the dishwasher are doing all the prep work too. So anything that's high maintenance, like fondue or their signature french onion soup we can't offer. Mussels we are doing with great effort.

One of the owners said perhaps one night we should have only those high maintenance items
and none of the other dishes. I think it would be funny. I am getting a kick out of working there and I learn so much about how they make the dishes and how they make decisions.
I am also surprised how many people ask for alterations to standard offerings, which to me is
somewhat insulting to the chef. Jeff and Son go out of their way to make people happy.

For Becky

Yep, that's Ozzie ! He's was hard to get a photo of but at least Becky can see he's ok. We had not seen him for about 3 days. I posted this for her while she is away, it's like KittyCam!

People In and Out

Many many people are coming back and then having to leave again for obligations and so they are in and out and need to have someone on the ground meet people and check their houses, etc.
That's me.

I am glad to do it but I had to start telling people no as of today. No new 'clients', I am getting too burned out. The restaurant work makes my whole body ache too, I am not used to it so I can't spread myself too thin.

So my friend Becky went to W. VA for her mom's birthday. Her cats were here during the hurricane as she was out for a short trip when it hit and they are outside cats and hard
to get a hold on. The cats were fine, it's a miracle and they don't want to leave.

The neighborhood is a giant construction zone and large machinery drones all day and the cats just stay. So I am feeding them while she is out. You can sort of see the deck is all messed up, it is detached from the house. She had about 5 feet of water. Her place is salvageable, Becky had someone gut the part that was flooded. This is north of Claiborne Ave., uptown. Helping the kitties actually cheers me up a lot. Pet therapy.

Librarian/Dishwasher/Real Estate Broker/Animal Sitter

On Monday I went to see if I could help my friends get their restaurant open. They put me on as a food runner/dishwasher on Tuesday. I was terrified having not done this type of work for about 15 years. We only had 2 original kitchen staff, the chefs. Then we did have some fill in folks with much restaurant experience, like Mike who everyone knows from Dick & Jennie's.
Then we also had a few people like myself who just want to help. It was fun, we actually had a great opening night. The second night, the dishwasher broke. We barely kept up but we did keep up. The teamwork is unbelievable in that place right now.
The owner was washing dishes too. Here's a link to their website !
http://www.lacrepenanou.com/
I need to get a photo up here of Son's AK-47 hanging in the kitchen. He's the Vietnamese chef and he returned to the city really early before many people were back and was there cleaning out the kitchen, he had to bring his own protection.

Brave New World

I arrived one week ago, on Friday, Oct.14th and I was struck by how bad things looked to me again, after being gone for a week. When I returned it was so depressing, I wondered, "Can I do this?"

Well, I am doing IT ! I have been so busy it's hard to impress upon readers that every day in New Orleans right now feels like it's only five hours long. The first thing I did was help out with a great project sponsored by the mayor's office called "Clean Magazine" on Saturday. It was great! Hundreds of residents helped bag leaves and trash along with hundreds of National Guardsmen. Then these guys came behind us with huge trucks and machines to gather bags, piles of debris and appliances.

By the end of the day the entire street was so much more beautiful and they even had a streetcleaner give it a wash. Now businesses are up and running. I also saw a mailman! I still have not received any mail but my friend Emily is getting mail regularly. I am guessing this is because her carrier has returned.

Go New Orleans !

You have to look up sometimes ~ this was great.
All over the city people from all over the world are here putting our city back together again. It's
up to our citizens to get back and help in that effort. I met people from everywhere from the Netherlands to Cuba and people who left their families for long periods to help us. I thanked
everyone I could personally.

New Orleans: In the Quarter

There was plenty of parking in the Quarter, and no meter maids. I might like this smaller city thing.

New Orleans: CBD Fire

This is around the Doubletree hotel in the central business district.
For those who have experienced loss, we share your sorrow citywide. The French Quarter is lucky but they are the ones complaining right now about curfews and fear of code violations.
I went to Harry Anderson's town hall meeting and I've already had it with the quarterites. Jim Monahan, the owner of Molly's is the only one I have heard with any sense. He understands how lucky they are to be able to operate at all and also understands he is part of the larger city.

New Orleans: Bunny Bread Survives

This was not the only loaf of Bunny Bread I spotted in random places around town in piles of rubble.

New Orleans: Uptown Fire at St. Andrew

There were 3 major fires uptown during Katrina and while I was there, another devasted a home
in the most expensive part of uptown, on a private street near Audubon Park. Another fire broke out in the Marigny, so it's a continuing
threat. I spoke to a woman in the neighborhood here who never left. She said these houses were burned by crackheads, she said that they had tons of looted merchandise in there. This fire destroyed 3-5 homes. It even jumped across the street. There was a cat who was still living under one of the half destroyed homes that I fed/watered.

New Orleans: Katrina Damage Lakeview (Ponchartrain Expwy)

Lakeview was pretty much wiped out by heavy flooding because the 17th St. Canal is in their backyard. The lake rushed in the cravasse wiping out everything in it's path. The toxic water killed everything it touched. It was hard to believe even looking at it. I drove through this area regularly because it was a nice 'safe' place that interested many of my clients as possible places to live. Now, it looks creepy. I have always said there's no such thing as a safe place.

New Orleans: Not Alone

This house, uptown, had one too. The damage prevents the front door from even closing.

New Orleans: Gov. Nicholls Photo 3

Any home in New Orleans that is structurally unsafe is tagged with a warning sticker. We thought it was kinda funny that they couldn't even stick it on the house.