The Artist's Touch

So the past few weeks have been a true whirlwind. The renovation has been focused almost exclusively on the rental unit, because getting that income stream in will free up funds for developing the larger unit where we plan to live. A number of rather ambitious projects on the rental side are nearing completion, but none has had the amazing visual impact of the sheetrock repair and painting. And, while a number of helping hands were involved in the painting, for sheer technique, perseverance, and eye for detail, no one beats my Mom.

Unfortunately, I didn't really get too much of a chance to photograph the walls and ceiling before we painted. During the busiest time it seems as though I really forgot to take many pictures at all, but I can tell you for several weekends running both Mom and Dad were down here in lending all of their considerable painting expertise to this effort.

Mom and Dad really make a pretty incredible painting team. Dad generally does the "heavy lifting" with paint rollers and long poles and such, while Mom, with her fine eye for detail and her steady hand does the cutting in and woodwork (basically, the rest).

Just for spacing purposes, I threw the pictures of all of the nice edging throughout this post. This apartment used to be peach, deep red, and a wacky deep blue green all throughout. The new paint job makes *ME* want to live there.

These pictures really don't do justice to this paint job. The improvement is staggering over what was there previously, and I am still amazed at how nice it looks every time I walk in.

The Man with a Plan (and a chainsaw)

One of the most important sources of help in the process of both purchasing and renovating this property has been my parents. They have been amazingly supportive in almost every manner conceivable, from financial assistance to blood, sweat, tears, and an amazing amount of time and effort. They have driven here from Lafayette nearly every weekend since this project commenced, and that fact that I have not yet highlighted what they have helped me accomplish is really a bit embarrassing. To give you an idea of how incredibly generous they have been with their time, I can tell you that they were both down here on both Mother's Day and Father's Day this year. Thank you, thank you, thank you Mom and Dad for being so supportive, generous, and wonderfully helpful.

One of the first things Dad did when he donned his working overalls was to remove the Japanese magnolia from the front of the house. The tree was sure to bloom beautifully, and offered some shade to the porch, so the decision to remove it was a difficult one. However, the fact that it was leaning against the house was an invitation to disaster; termites, moisture, and/or wind-related damage were eventually going to result from its position, and pruning it was simply not going to alleviate those risks. Furthermore, the thing was planted directly over the water main which supplies the house with water from the street, and I was afraid that damage to this pipe from its roots was inevitable.

So, the weekend after the first big plumbing push, Dad drives down from Lafayette and starts to tackle some outdoor projects, chief among these being (so he thinks) the removal of the tree. It was a Friday, and he was able to come in while I was still at work. I called him from the office early afternoon to see how it was coming along, and he said with the most casual emphasis, "Well, the tree's down." Not half an hour later I got an email from Jean-Paul, who had driven by to retrieve his "SOLD!" sign. He was *very* complimentary of the new look, so I was dying to get home to see it. When I got home, here is what I saw. AWESOME!





The difference is, in fact, pretty amazing, as the gingerbread and front porch are, in my opinion, quite nice looking. With a new pain job (somewhere down on the list of things I plan to do) it's going to sing. Here's another, more recent picture after a little yardwork and the addition of the ficus trees from my old apartment.

The other big outdoor project Dad tackled that weekend was the fence in the backyard. To be perfectly honest, that fence is somewhat of an enigma. It was built using a large amount of treated lumber (read: expensive), but its design leaves a *lot* to be desired. The fence was built in odd sections, with a small, 1.5-2 ft section at the bottom and maybe a 6 ft. section on top. The fenceposts were treated 4x4's, which with age have leaned, warped, and in some cases fallen down.


There was a big pile of lumber in the backyard that had apparently come from the downed sections of the fence, and Dad was able to use these to basically reconstruct the fence along the entire back property line. He even did battle with banana plants and helped reconstruct the neighbor's shed in the process, and I think even he was a bit surprised at how much effort this fence took compared to the earlier tree removal.



I am embarrassed to say, I can't find a picture of the completed fence. Here's a shot of the work in progress; I promise to add a picture of the finished work soon.

The hiatus is over!

Well, there's nothing like buying a house to make you too busy or too tired all the time to write blog entries, but believe it or not, I have received a couple of requests for information on the renovation. That's right, people asked for more blog entries! And to be perfectly honest, I am at a great point to resume blogging here because I am so proud of how the renovations are turning out.

I'll be posting a series of before / after picture entries today (or just "after" if I can't find a good "before" image). Please, please feel free to comment as Becky and I love the feedback. Thanks for your interest and for visiting.

Kaufman

Picture Post

Happy Mother's Day! Here's some photos for mom:

That's the old linoleum tile that was in the bedroom of the rental. I was pretty excited about cleaning it up and refurbishing it. What a fantastic green basket weave pattern! But Mike vetoed that in favor of finishing the pine wood floor boards underneath. To each his own!

This was the old floor of the closet in the rental side. I'd like to meet the design mastermind who chose all these tiles. But a little water damage rots out the subfloor, and people have a kneejerk reaction to put down a sturdy false floor:

I guess that's better. Check out the leopard wall!

No after photos for that spotty sheetrock yet.

Here's the new tile in the bathroom.

Mike's working hard here to get the grout in. Color: Haystack. Outcome: Awesome.

Feast your eyes on some during and after ceiling repair work.





That's some quality sheetrock floating. Nice work Mike and Mrs. Kaufman!

Unfortuantely, there are no current photos documenting the backyard fence makeover. But let me tell you, Mike's dad is a miracle worker with recycled treated lumber.

Now if only we could get rid of the lingering sewer gas stench...

Things are going to change around here!

Well, I figured out how to allow another person to post to the blog, and who else would I invite to help me document life in uptown New Orleans but the person with whom I happily spend most of it? My girlfriend Becky is a most welcome addition to this publication, and I hope very much that you enjoy her writing as much as I do.

The Great Plumbing Adventure

So I knew when I purchased the house that it had some problems. A couple of spots showed water damage, a clear sign that the roof was in need of repair, albeit minor. Inspections had revealed several other warts, including damaged ducting under the larger unit, a problem with the kitchen faucet in the same unit, some electrical issues that will be addressed at a later date, etc. Looming large among these problems was a bigger, stinkier problem.

The roof is an old asbestos slate roof. Becky's research indicates that the house dates back to before 1909, so I doubt the roof is the original. It is clearly as old as Methuseleh, but it seems to be holding up well for its age. Jean-Paul recommended Stokes Roofing, a local outfit he has used a number of times for a number of his properties. Mr. Stokes was wonderful, and had the repair work done in a matter of 2 days after my close. In fact, the day after he finished, New Orleans experienced one of the heaviest downpours I remember this spring. With the roof repaired, it was time to focus my attention on the problem that was actually causing me the most concern: the toilet in the rental unit.

The inspections had revealed that the toilet on the rental side had lost its drain. The pipe that was supposed to carry the flushed contents had broken loose from the piece where the toilet bolted to the floor. That piece, a collar over the drain pipe, is called the toilet flange, an in this case it was wide open to the crawlspace. This meant that anytime the toilet was flushed, raw sewerage was being dumped into the dirt underneath the house. I am not sure how long this state of affairs had existed while the previous owner was residing in that unit, but I can tell you that there were a lot of air fresheners in the closet.

So, not knowing too much about plumbing, I had called a couple of plumbers over to take a look. The first plumber glanced at the problem and immediately quoted pretty high (like multiple thousands of dollars). I am pretty sure he just didn't want to have anything to do with the mess. The second plumber that I called, on a recommendation from Jean-Paul, was Chris Montalbano of John Montalbano plumbing. Chris was full of information and not afraid to crawl around under the house. He told me that it looked like there was more damage than I had suspected, and he wouldn't know for sure what we were dealing with until he got a chance to dig up a few things under there. He gave me some advice about tracing out the pipes and getting some more information so that he would be able to "surgically strike" the problems on his next visit. I thanked him, and as he left I realized there would be some getting down and dirty for myself.

I picked up some coveralls, but before I actually got a chance to get too dirty, my friend Jack came by to see how things were going. Jack is in the midst of a much, much more intense remodel. He purchased a home right after the storm that had gotten some water damage. He gutted it to the studs, re-roofed it, levelled it, ran his plumbing and electricity, framed out rooms, and now has his bathroom tiled. He has a wealth of knowledge to share about all of the phases of the project he has been through, and he had the suggestion that we tear up the bathroom floor to get to the toilet drain. I have to say, that idea beat the crap out of crawling through it. He also suggested that it would be much, much cheaper for us to repair the pipes ourselves. Since he apparently had the expertise to help me with this project, I decided to opt for the "Do it yourself" solution.

Tearing up the floor was easy. First, we removed the toilet and set it on some old towels in the bathtub. That way, any leakage from the water in the tank actually went down a drain pipe (for the first time in who knows how long). A brittle piece of old, yellowing linoleum glued only at the edges came up in seconds, revealing a sheet of 3/4" plywood covering most of the bathroom floor. With a hammer and a device like a mini crowbar we pulled nails out of it until we could use real crowbars to get it out. We saw an old cast-iron pipe sticking out of the mud which is where the "flush" is suposed to go.

Seemed easy enough at that point. Home Depot has rubber "boots" that can join pipes together. Some PVC pipe and a boot and we could have this thing fixed in an hour or so. We acquired our parts and began the repair. Unfortunately, at some point during this process the pipe we were working with just fell over. Into the, um, mud. After some evaluation, which included some shovelling and clearing, we determined that we still needed to use a boot or two, but in different places and with more PVC. A long, sweaty, stinky day later, we had a pipe coming out of the floor which successfully connected into the sewer system, and the foundation was laid for the toiled to be reattached. Of course, since I plan to tile, the toilet is going to have to wait to actually be reinstalled. More later.

So what happened at the closing?

Well, it's been a really busy few days, and I don't expect that things will be slowing down anytime soon. I've got quite a few things to share, but overall things seem to be moving along very well.

On Wednesday of last week, I closed on the house. The scheduled plan was for me to meet Jean-Paul over at the house for a final walk-through at about 9 AM. Since I began the day too excited to sleep, when 9 AM finally rolled around I was ready to roll. In fact, I was able to take advantage of the morning before 9 by bringing Becky to work downtown and stopping for a cup of coffee with her on the way.

Jean-Paul met me at the property at 9 and we began the tour. There had been a little concern that the owner might not move out by the closing date, but those fears proved unfounded. The walk-through showed that she had, in fact, removed almost everything from the house and that it appeared ready for the myriad of improvement projects that had been tumbling around in my brain, or in conversations with Becky and my family and friends. The house seemed like it was in the same shape it had been in when I placed my offer, so I gave my approval and we were off to the title company.

We used Crescent Title, an organization Jean-Paul recommended from what seemed like a longstanding good relationship. He knew the folks over there by name and had nothing but good things to say about their service, competence, and efficiency. Based on my limited experience, I can only agree. The folks over there were very nice, even offering me cookies right out of the oven while we waited for 10 o'clock to arrive. They seemed to reciprocate Jean-Paul's goodwill, and one of the staff members showed me something I never hope to see again... a water bill for $42,000+ dollars. Yikes!

While I was in the waiting room, looking at a magazine for New Orleans homeowners, Doris (the seller's agent) arrived. She was a real sweetheart, as she had been during our previous encounters. She was not accompanied by the seller, but we had known that the seller might not be able to attend the closing, and Doris had power of attorney to sign and complete the sale. Since it appeared that all of the relevant parties were present, then, we moved to a conference room to begin the closing.

They sat Jean-Paul and myself on one side of the big table, with Doris on the other. Bob Bergeron, the attorney who handled the closing, sat at the head. He was very friendly as he quickly and efficiently handed me a stream of papers to sign and explained to me what each item was. About 5 signatures into the process, the seller showed up with a friend and the stream of documents received even more signatures. I thanked her again for the opportunity to purchase the home, and she reiterated again how much she had enjoyed living there, especially during Mardi Gras. The stream of papers to be signed slowed down and finally ended, the seller and I shook hands, and everyone wished me good luck, a wish I returned to the seller. I stood up from the table officially a homeowner. Then I sat down again and wrote out a couple of important checks they had forgotten to ask for during the signing process. Jean-Paul also wished me luck and gave me a nice gift as well.

I walked back to my car wanting to jump for joy. In my mind, I was picturing the scene from the movie "Major League" where Wesley Snipes figures out that he has not been cut. He maintains a straight face in front of all the other players, but sneaks outside to yell in triumph and perform a little dance of jubilation, and that's about how I felt. With a big folder of paperwork under my arm, I got in my car and headed for the office.

And that's how I became a homeowner.