Moving House

Now that we finally finished our very first renovation project (which took four years), we went and bought what we hope to be our first "last house". We figured that since we are a double public-service-worker family, (i.e. no-retirement-package-state/fed-program-jobs), renovation is pretty much the only way we were going to get one of those grand New Orleans-historic houses we love.

So we worked our way through the massive renovation at Carondelet -which, by the way, had only the support walls and the floors for the second level left (yeah, no electricity, plumbing or anything like that) by the time we got to it- oh- and a staircase. We moved in on our first wedding anniversary, before the sheet rock was finished or electricity was hooked up. We took showers at the gym and ate meals at every fair priced eatery in town (over and over and over) until we were hooked up with gas and electricity. We lost track of the true color of our dogs due to the constant film of sheet rock dust that covered all things living or not. Not recommended living for good health, but sometimes you just have to work with it.

I am very fond (proud) of our lovely Carondelet home, but it is a little small (four live-able rooms) for us now. I teach at our dining room table and Billy works from home from a desk at the top our stairs.

So, we found the Jackson house, fell in love and went to work finagling our way to buying it. It looks great on the outside and in the first two rooms, but as with every old house...the trouble lies within the walls. The ceilings were caved in, the windows and roof leaked, causing many icky problems and a few sills were snapped, causing a lovely six inch dip in the dining room and back building that would allow a marble to roll through these rooms at a disturbing velocity.

In all though, these problems are very few compared with the job we did at Carondelet and especially those that people from flooded areas have had to deal with over the past two years, so we very lucky to be able to manage this project.

We are moving into what will eventually be the rental apartment this week, which I will hopefully finish up in the next few days (ha!). At least the plaster/sheet rock dust will be contained in the main house!

Some pictures of our dream house:

A small glimpse of the work:

Water Damage (but a beautiful stairway!)


Sill Damage

Which causes sinking and a need to jack 'er up:

Someone stuck CARDBOARD under plaster!
BUT, why we love the pain:

The double parlor with huge, WORKING pocket doors. (The owners snagged the mantles)

FOUR basically in tact medallions!

We are so lucky and super-excited!