Kathy's Remodeling Blog

Rebuilding green in New Orleans

Last year, New Orleans was the setting for the National Assn. of Home Builders' national green building conference.

The conference included a tour of green homes, including the one pictured here:

1. The exterior of the charming turn-of-the-last-century cottage. The home is owned by a woman who bought it from her grandmother, so it's been in the family a long time. After the levees failed in 2005, it was flooded with at least 5 feet of water and was nearly a teardown.

2. Contractor Julie Groth, (pictured here), of Step by Step Construction, said this was the most damaged house she had ever worked on. Now that it has been restored, however, the house feels new, clean and healthy. Green features include paperless drywall to prevent mold growth in the humid climate, nontoxic paints, Energy Star appliances, a dual-flush toilet, an efficient heating and cooling system and kitchen counters made from heart pine salvaged from the framing of old buildings.

3. The home includes a tankless water heater. Out back is a deck built by women in a construction class (titled Sophie the Riveter) that Julie teaches at Tulane University.

4. The ceiling of the attic is coated with blown-in insulation and is not vented. Whereas vented attics in other climates make sense to allow hot air to escape, in a hot and humid climate like New Orleans, a vented attic will bring in hot and humid air that will condense around the air conditioning unit, causing water damage and future mold and rot problems. Thus, no vented attic for this house.

Rebuilding New Orleans is a monumental task, brought about by the hearts and hands of homeowners, volunteers and local contractors. And here's the amazing part: There is a mindset among many in the area to rebuild New Orleans as the nation's first carbon-neutral green city.

(Photos: KPR)

In New Orleans and missing home (sort of)

Here I am in New Orleans, visiting my husband, who has been hired by Louisiana State University for six months to help train people how to rebuild hurricane-damaged homes properly.

This whole deal started back in February when Bill and I drove through the area as tourists. We were shocked at how much rebuilding needed to be done almost three years after the storm. And as we drove around, Bill could see how some of the windows were being installed and he could see it was being done wrong in some cases. Installing windows properly, especially in a humid and rainy climate, is not simple. Bill started referring to a "second disaster" on the way as those windows will leak in the future during normal weather conditions.

Back home in California, Bill really started feeling passionate about those improperly installed windows. This is what he does for a living, after all, teaching people how to do construction, at contractor trade shows, in online courses, for manufacturers and building companies. Before that, before he became a contractor, he worked 15 years as a diver on oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico (and other places around the world) and spent many years enjoying New Orleans life.

Finally, Bill decided to come down here and find a way to be helpful to the homeowners, contractors and volunteers doing the rebuilding. And as providence would have it, LSU was searching for someone just like him, to help steer these good-intentioned people toward correct building methods.

So here I sit, doing my work in the home Bill is renting for a few months, and my nesting instincts are in full bloom. This is a cute little house, but seriously needs embellishment. It’s all I can do to keep my mind on my writing, and not on what I would do with this house if it was mine. I’d definitely install French doors from a family room to the back yard and put a bird feeder out there. The kitchen could use a little rearranging. The way it is now, the sink and stove are in complete opposite corners of the room. That’s awkward.

But I didn’t come here to mentally remodel this home. I came here to visit Bill and to get some of my own writing projects done. In fact, this should be a vacation for me from the incessant nesting I do back home. I get so many lists going of what I’d like to get done on my house that I feel exhausted before I’ve gotten started. It’s good to step away, to get a break, to get a new perspective.

And what better place to do that than in the Crescent City?

Mike Holmes in New Orleans

I've got my own paparazzo working down in New Orleans (AKA my husband, Bill) and he swung by the house Mike Holmes of "Holmes on Homes" is helping to build.

This project is part of the Brad Pitt-founded Make It Right Foundation.

You can see Mike on the right giving direction to his team members. A hot and humid July in New Orleans is the perfect environment for Mike's signature undershirt-overalls outfit.

Notice how this house is being built on tall piers. Next time the levees fail (and that's almost certain to happen), this house will get less flooded than one set on grade (ground level).

(Photo: Bill Robinson)

Insulation and moisture issues in New Orleans

Watch SoCal contractor Bill Robinson discuss insulation and moisture issues in New Orleans with homeowner Ariane Wiltse and NOLA contractor Julie Groth.

Then, take the test:

Click here for the answer.

Dispatch from New Orleans: The foundation saga, cont.

By Ariane Wiltse

My mom arrived last week with the best of intentions. Like other relatives who have come before her, she came to help with my house in the Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans. She also came knowing that we’d be working in temperatures hovering around 95 degrees with 95% humidity. And, the air conditioner in the trailer is busted.

Mentally, she had prepared for the heat. But she hadn’t prepared for the mosquitoes and fire ants. They made a buffet of her, leaving her arms and legs a red, swollen mess. After her first night here, she had 50 bites. (Yes, she counted.) I’m sure she’s up to hundreds by now. I, on the other hand, have about five. I don’t know if being better acclimated to summer in New Orleans makes my blood sour to the little suckers. But they sure find hers sweet.

Heat and bug bites aside, we weren’t able to get much done on the house this week. I had hoped that between my mom (“Mama Lin"), my friend Beau, myself and another worker recommended by a friend, we’d be able to knock out the rest of the foundation. But the worker decided that he didn’t want to work this week, leaving me scrambling for another set of hands, and I found those with Andy.

I’m also partly at fault for the delay. When Beau and I and Mama Lin poured the concrete footings and set the piers in the front of the house last week, I hyper-focused on making sure the damn things were level. And in my obsessing, I missed the small detail that the piers weren’t in line with the house. In fact, they set a good six inches too far back, clearly missing the sills.

I didn’t notice this little problem until we were about to install the sills, after the concrete had had a long weekend to cure. Seeing the distance between sill and piers, Beau grabbed the sledgehammer. He said he was preparing for the inevitable. (He’s become an expert, of sorts, at breaking rocks in the hot sun.) I figured there must be some kind of way to fix the piers without going to such extremes. But Beau said to do so would only be doing a “Peanut job.” (See what we mean by a "Peanut job" below.) The piers had to go.

Andy stepped in and found a middle ground. A post-Katrina volunteer and graduate student from the University of Wisconsin, Andy moved here after finishing up at school. I called him the day before, pleading for help after my scheduled worker decided to take the week off. Andy has worked on lots of crews, so he brought a degree of expertise and rationality that was missing from the trifecta of ignorance among me, Mama Lin and Beau.

Speaking with the authority of the anointed, Andy suggested that we wedge a pick (his favorite tool) and a crow bar under the concrete slabs to finagle them forward. This sounded like a fine idea to me, so I grabbed my camera to document the Moving of the Slabs. Beau kept the sledgehammer close. He knew he’d be vindicated.

The first one moved quickly and easily, so quickly that I almost missed the shot. The second one didn’t work out so well. I tried to encourage Beau and Andy from behind the camera: “Heave! Ho!” But it was no use. The damn thing wouldn’t budge. And even if it had, it probably wasn’t the best-made concrete pier. It was our first attempt at pier-building without experienced supervision. And it looked like it too. It might as well have been duct-taped and bubble-gummed together. A real Peanut job. So after much deliberation, I sacrificed the pier to Beau and his sledgehammer.

Because the concrete footings and piers need at least three days to cure before we can put weight on them, losing one pier to the sledgehammer put us back several days. We’ll get the foundation in the front of the house finished this week, but the remaining 24 feet of sill and half a dozen piers on the side of the house will have to wait until I return from vacation. Bummer.

See the story so far

Dispatch from New Orleans: From the ground up

By Ariane Wiltse

As the big day approached, the day when we'd jack up the house, cut out the old sills and rebuild the piers, I began to take great joy in watching my good friend Beau squirm (he's standing while watching my dad Joe).

"What's the matter Beau?" I asked as he paced incessantly, stealing peeks at my crumbling brick piers. "Afraid we'll drop the house and squash you?"

Now, I don't want to come across as too bold, and Lord knows I don't want to jinx the job -- we still have a good little bit to do. But so far, we've replaced all the sills and piers along one long side of the house without so much as a stubbed toe, let alone a squashed Beau.

And for that, I have my dad and cousin to thank. My 60-year-old "Papa Joe" and 50-year-old cousin Markey spent five hot, humid and hard days here recently working from dawn to Miller time (4:30ish) rebuilding my disintegrating foundation.

In that short period, they replaced 46 feet of 6-inch-by-6-inch sills, poured 24-inch-by-24-inch footings with 4,000 pounds of concrete and rebuilt 22 concrete block piers, setting footlong steel rebar and pouring more concrete inside each cavity. Then we added termite shields, shims where necessary, and leveled the old gal.

Had I been forced to hire a contractor to do the same work, it would have cost, according to estimates, from $10,875 to $13,400.

While my family and I worked on the foundation, Beau busted up the front concrete porch. (Visions of his feet jutting out from underneath a flattened house, Wicked Witch of the East-style, had become problematic.)

Sledgehammer in hand, Beau chipped away at the solid, steel-reinforced structure for a solid two days. (You heard me -- Beau the computer geek was breaking rocks in the hot sun.) I asked him to sing us a little ditty while he swung the sledgehammer, perhaps a Woody Guthrie chain-gang tune, or at least "I've been working on the railroad, all the live-long day," but he refused. Instead he stuck iPod plugs in his ears and turned up the volume to some political podcast. He didn't seem amused, but he never complained.

On their last night in town, and as a small gesture of my gratitude for all their help and hard work, I treated Papa Joe and Markey (Beau didn't return my call in time) to dinner at Commander's Palace, one of the best and most highfalutin' restaurants in New Orleans.

After dropping my family off at the airport, I got to thinking: I don't know many people with as large and close-knit a family as mine. Although we have our disagreements (we are a passionate and proud people prone to stubborn arguments), I know I can count on a crew of kinfolk, as they can count on me. Few people in our fast-paced, cross-country modern world can pick up a phone and ask parents, siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles (living thousands of miles away) to put their lives on hold and come help with a big, nasty and hard job, especially in the New Orleans summer heat.

For that, and so much more, I am truly blessed.

See the whole story in pictures

(Photo: Ariane Wiltse)

Bonus Round: How do you pronounce New Orleans?

As long as we're keeping track of the rebuilding progress in New Orleans, I wonder:

How do y'all pronounce the name of the city?

As a not-very-well-traveled native of Burbank, I've always pronounced it "NEW-or-leans."

And when I'm trying to be cute, I pronounce it "NOIR-lins."

But when I've visited the area, several times in the last few months, I've noticed the folks down there pronounce it like this: "new-OR-lee-ins."

Or: "new-AH-lee-ins."

I love the latter two pronunciations and may just switch to one of those.

(Photo: Kathy Price-Robinson)

Dispatch from New Orleans: SoCal contractor moved there after storms

After I wrote about a green home renovation in New Orleans (see it here), I heard from contractor Tom Borland, who had made that home's beautiful wood countertops. The counters are notable for the warm beauty that came from old, salvaged pine with super-tight grain.

It turns out Tom was a SoCal builder who moved to New Orleans just after the storms of 2005. Tom has a lot of tales to tell. Here's what he had to say:

Question: How is it that you came to move to New Orleans just after the storm? Many people were leaving at that time.

Answer: For some reason, the storm was an event of great interest to me from the start. I was working on a vacation home my wife and I bought in Jacksonville, Fla., when it happened. I remember telling my wife in California at the time that I wanted to do something to help, as I heard the daily reports on National Public Radio about the destruction and the failed response in its aftermath.

My church in El Segundo (Hilltop Church of Christ) has an elder who is from Slidell, La., and church members put together a major relief effort, comprised of more than 10,000 volunteers, over the following year. A friend called and asked if I wanted to take part, and on Sept. 17, 2005, we were en route to Slidell. After two weeks of gutting homes in St. Tammany Parish, I flew home to Los Angeles, met my wife at the airport and told her that we were moving to New Orleans. I packed my stuff, finished the job I was on and left for NOLA [the city's nickname], arriving back the beginning of October.

I suppose I moved here out of a combination of wanting to help, the possibility of making a little money, a chance to escape the traffic and rat race of L.A. and the feeling that the future was wide open in NOLA. I remember riding around the city from job to job and feeling like the city was just waiting to not only be rebuilt but possibly reinvented. The people involved in the rebuilding were an interesting combination of hucksters, idealists, do-gooders and hard workers.

Q: How is building and remodeling in NOLA different from building and remodeling in Southern California?

A: The differences are so many it’s hard to know where to start. With the exception of the suburbs, everything here is old. I know that back in L.A. we have neighborhoods like Pasadena, Hollywood, etc. with plenty of '20s-era homes, but I think most guys are working on homes like you would find in the Valley — post-war, minimal detailing as far as interior trim, level floors, lots of stucco exteriors and most important, you can remodel them with materials readily available at your local Lowe’s.

Here, the stock of turn-of-the-century and older homes seems to be . . .

Dispatch from New Orleans: The sweet sound of progress

By Ariane Wiltse

Oh, what beautiful music power tools make -- the steady hum of a compressor crooning like a late-night jazz singer in a smoky haunt, the staccato beat of a nail gun, the trumpet of a power saw. At last, the ubiquitous sounds of New Orleans’ recovery have come home.

After eight months spent prepping and planning -- of chopping down the 15-foot-high jungle that consumed the yard, gutting 1,800 square feet of house to the studs, finagling insurance coverage that costs less than a mortgage, scouting for a reasonably priced yet highly recommended contractor and fighting with City Hall for a building permit -- I finally broke ground on rebuilding my house. Can I get a hallelujah?

Now that I’ve come this far, I hope to get the house structurally secure and waterproof before the scary part of hurricane season arrives in August. It’s ambitious but oh so necessary.

Starting from the ground up, Michael Gomez and his crew are shoring and leveling the original 1830s back section of the house, which is made of bargeboards (see a definition of bargeboards).

Structurally, it’s a wreck. Most of the sills have gone soft from decades of water rot and feasting Formosans. Others are cobbled together from mix-matched pieces of lumber. Several lack lap joints. Sill ends sit precariously on ancient, crumbling brick piers. Walls lean. Floor joists float several inches from the sills. And the ends of the structure aren’t square.

It’s a big, nasty and complicated job. I figured it best to let the experts tackle it. By the time they finish, they will have replaced about 60 feet of sills, rebuilt two dozen concrete block and steel-reinforced piers and racked the walls into their proper place.

As Mike and his crew work, they also are teaching me and a couple friends I’ve hired for the summer how to finish the sill and pier work on the main portion of the house.

Although the back of the house is in the worst shape, many of the sills and piers along the relatively newer front section also need replacing. And because I don’t have the budget to hire a contractor to complete the job, I’ve hired friends to help. Furthermore, because I have only two friends available to work, one with a good bit of experience, the other with zilch, my dad and a cousin arrive later this week to help us jack up the house, cut out the old sills, fit new ones, pour concrete footings, build new cement block piers and level the monster.

People say it’s not a complicated job, replacing sills and piers, just labor-intensive. They add, however, that if we screw up, walls or even the entire house could fall. Kinda scary. To avoid such a disaster, my friends Sam and Beau are working hard to secure sagging ceiling joists, sister up wobbly studs and brace leaning walls before we even look at a jack, let alone hoist up the house.

Wish us luck. Say a prayer. Light a candle, do a dance, whatever. I have a feeling we’re gonna need it.

(Photos: Ariane Wiltse)

The story so far

Dispatch from New Orleans: History salvaged from the side of the road

There are two basic ways of thinking about old windows in post-Katrina New Orleans. On one hand, old windows are rich with history and architectural detail. On the other hand, they can be cracked, broken, rotten and leaking.

It's the latter category that causes the contractors, workers, homeowners and volunteers who are rebuilding New Orleans to toss old windows out and replace them with new ones that are watertight and weather resistive.

But it's the former way of thinking — with reverence for century-old handiwork — that causes people like Ariane Wiltse to salvage old windows from the piles of demolition materials tossed alongside so many storm-ravaged streets.

Above, on the left, you see some of the windows Ariane has collected to use in the 1870s cottage she bought and is restoring in the Holy Cross neighborhood of the Lower 9th Ward. Anywhere Ariane can preserve history in this house, she is determined to do so.

Also, see the stacks of old bricks Ariane has collected for future projects.

See more of Ariane's story.

(Photos: Kathy Price-Robinson)

Dispatch from New Orleans: An altar for the missing

Ariane Wiltse is restoring a Katrina-damaged 1870s home in the Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans, and she is sharing her journey with us. Here's her latest installment:

The Altar

In the front room of my house, the room I tell visitors will one day serve as my library, sits a wood-burning fireplace with an Arts & Crafts-engraved slate face. It's quite fancy. A real eye-catcher, that fireplace. So much so that I figured it for just the right spot to place an altar.

I hadn't planned on putting an altar on my fireplace mantel, although no one in New Orleans would question my judgment. It's a fairly natural thing to do here. But I'm not from New Orleans. Michigan by birth. Virginia from there on out. And up North, people don't put altars on their fireplace mantels; they put fancy candles and knickknacks, family photos in fine silver frames, and during the Christmas season they cover 'em in all manner of evergreens. This doesn't leave much space for the dead and gone.

I don't know if the people who were living in my house when the Storm struck are dead. But I do know that they are gone. Gone so far and for so long that the neighbors don't know where to find them. We've tried. They don't return calls to their pre-Katrina phone numbers. City Hall says they still live at my house, but they don't come around anymore.

The banker has no answers. Foreclosures have a way of dehumanizing people, treating them as if they never existed. Even Google can't locate them. It's as if they disappeared.

Seeing as I can't find them to return the items they left behind, I decided to show my respects by placing their smallest belongings on the fireplace mantel. It seemed only right. I couldn't bring myself to throw away the common remnants of past lives. So I put them on display to remind myself and any visitors that a family once lived here, a family which likely lost all they had in the flood.

I catalogued the items I found. They include:

• A Zippo lighter
• A CD of the movie "The Wedding Singer"
• A 2-lb. hand weight
• Several large, primary-colored Legos, the kind used by toddlers
• A stick of women's concealer, just like the one I use to hide dark circles under my eyes
• A black barber's comb
• A plastic figurine of the cowboy from the Disney movie "Toy Story"
• A bottle of peach-flavored Cisco, the same "liquid crack" we used to drink in high school once we'd graduated from Boone's Farm wine coolers
• A 9mm bullet
• Little girl hair ties with large red balls on the tips used to hold ponytails in place
• A sugar dish made in Japan
• A tarnished silver spoon
• A prescription bottle of Orphenadrine, used to treat the painful muscle spasms so common with Parkinson's disease
• A rusted set of keys
• A boomerang
• A form letter from a class-action lawsuit for "clients who sustained a stroke, heart attack, or any other cardiovascular or heart-related injury while, or soon after, taking Bextra or its generic equivalent, Valdecoxib"
• A plastic green tiger
• Two spools of thread, one blue, the other pink
• A Hibernia bank card
• A pitchfork-looking utensil used for barbecuing
• A golf ball
• Comedy & tragedy masks, just like the kind my aunt used to give me every Christmas when I was a little girl

I pulled down bigger, perhaps, more significant items from the attic. There was furniture, all kinds of wall treatments, a cream-colored and beaded mother-of-the-bride wedding dress, reams of upholstery fabric and boxes. Boxes and more boxes. Overstuffed with paperwork and family photos, Christmas ornaments and toys. I had to put those boxes out for the trash.

A woman can only look at Easy-Bake Ovens and remote-control race cars for so long. Soon enough they begin to they make her crazy wondering what happened to the children to whom they belonged. Maybe one day they'll pass by for a visit and tell me.

See the story so far

(Photo: Ariane Wiltse)

TV Preview: "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" in New Orleans

As much as I regret missing "60 Minutes," I will do so this evening in order to catch the two-hour season finale of "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition," which begins at 7 p.m. (6 p.m. CST) on ABC.

This show is the culmination of a 50-state tour by the Extreme crew, and storm-torn southern Louisiana seems a fitting locale for that.

In this episode, a tornado-ravaged house is rebuilt for an extended family and a flooded church is rebuilt for a congregation. Read the full press release.

Here's what I'll be looking for:

• Some sense of how very hard it is to rebuild down there with the shortage of skilled workers and materials, rising crime rates and the rain, heat and humidity. I mean, you can't just run down to the corner hardware store for some extra nails because the store is boarded up and abandoned and the owners relocated to Houston or wherever.

• A sense of historic preservation. Most "Extreme Makeover" homes are simply mowed down. And if a house is totally ruined, that's fine. But with buildings from the 1700s and 1800s in southern Louisiana, too much of that would be a national tragedy.

• Ever more blatant product placement. Have you noticed how the long, lingering shots of store names and manufacturer logos have become more pronounced on this show over the years? Someday, this might be how all TV is done: You pick the products being advertised, and then build the script around those.

• And finally, the emotional payday with tears and cheers. You can't help but feel for people whose lives are changed with a new home. (I'd love to write a book about what happens to these homeowners when the cameras have left. Here's an Extreme Makeover home for sale in Atlanta.)

If you watch the show tonight, come back here and share your impressions.

'Extreme Makeover: Home Edition' in New Orleans airs May 18

Watch amateur video from the final day of the build:

Watch the day of the reveal.

Dispatch from New Orleans: The polls have closed; the ayes have it

The polls are now closed on this question:

Would following the restoration of an 1870s Katrina-damaged home in New Orleans be interesting to readers of this blog?

The votes: Yes: 89%; No: 11%

The ayes have it by a landslide.

Ariane Wiltse, the homeowner, is also setting up a blog so she can chronicle her home's progress in more detail than we can handle here.

This kind of reminds me of the 18-month-long Dream Home Diaries in the New York Times, which followed a Boston couple's building of a $1-million dream home on a small island in Florida.

The difference here is that this is not a new home and Ariane doesn't have $1 million. Her budget is more like a wing and a prayer. And all this makes for a more fascinating story, at least to me.

Thanks for voting. If you were among the 11% who indicated this story would not be of interest, I'd like to hear why you voted that way. What is your perspective?

As for the rest of you, welcome to this journey.

Dispatch from New Orleans: Do you care about this?

I had the occasion to visit New Orleans recently and toured a Katrina-damaged home that had been restored in a green manner, which I wrote about in a previous post.

I also toured the home pictured above, situated in the Holy Cross Neighborhood of the Lower 9th Ward, near the Global Green model home Brad Pitt is involved with.

I'd love to follow the restoration of this 1870s home on this blog. But I'm not sure if you would find it interesting and I need your feedback. I'm enthralled with this region and the fact that an estimated 50,000 storm-damaged homes need work. Whenever I see a 100-year-old home that needs help, I feel an almost irresistible desire to fix it up.

This home is a stone's throw from the Mississippi River and is now owned by Ariane Wiltse, whom you see above in the green shirt, talking with contractor Julie Groth. You can also see the trailer on the top left where Ariane will live until the house gets the prized certificate of occupancy.

When the storms hit in 2005, Ariane was in Florida in graduate school, studying to become a foreign correspondent. After graduating, though, she felt she needed to come home to New Orleans and be part of the rebuild. This house was a foreclosure listed for $24,000. A bit of a bidding war ensued, and Ariane got it for $40,000.

At the time, the drywall (which they call sheetrock in the eastern part of the country) was stripped off the lower four feet of the walls. But Ariane wanted to see what was going on with the entire structure, so she removed the rest of it. With a written home inspection and the advice of several contractors, she has decided to make all structural improvements before closing up the walls. Because flooding from the levee failure did not sit for weeks in this house (homes near the river tend to be on higher ground), there is not extensive mold damage and no mold smell.

I could go on. But should I?

I'm curious to find out: Would readers of this blog enjoy following along as Ariane restores this house? And to hear of her struggles as a community activist fighting against the area's rising crime? Or is this just too far from SoCal to be of interest?

Dispatch from New Orleans

Ariane's story so far:

May 11, 2008: Do you care about this?

May 13, 2008: The polls have closed; the ayes have it

May 21, 2008: An altar for the missing

May 30, 2008: History salvaged from the side of the road

June 3, 2008: The sweet sound of power tools

June 25, 2008: From the ground up

Plus:

Rebuiding green in New Orleans

Needs of Lower Ninth Ward put my own remodeling plans in perspective