first post!

Like the title says peeps, this is the first post!

So, without further ado, some quick background information before the main content:

After spending a few weeks searching for houses on the internet, and spending a week looking at some in person, on the last day of our search we found this house and got a contract for it. We had a tumultuous few weeks wondering whether the deal for it would fall through, and we actually signed cancellation papers at one point, but in the end cooler heads prevailed and we finally moved our suitcases in!

The house was supposedly built in 1911, and is on a really nice street one block off the streetcar line. It's got a great basic layout, and lots of cool and unique architectural details. While it's not a "traditonal" New Orleans house (you know, the shotgun style with crazy high ceilings 14ft ceilings and wrought iron balcony on the front) it fits right in to our neighborhood. Of all the houses we looked at, it had the most level least creaky floors, high enough ceilings for us (at 10ft, a full foot higher than our previous home) and cool transoms above most all the doors, potential for offstreet parking, a small addition to possibly be a rental or guest house, and space for a garage/workshop.

On to the main content, we moved our suitcases in on a monday afternoon, and with no water, packed up some basics and got a hotel room down the street for the night.

Day two, we have water, and also our shipment of basic goods arrived, with mainly a couple mattresses, cookware, and tools. we set up camp in the front room and stay our first night!

Day three, I take the kids to the zoo via the streetcar which ella totally loves, and that evening go assist my mom getting moved in to her apartment across town.

Day four, I pick up our on-call designer from the airport and we spend the day talking on plans things we'd like to change etc.

Day five, our Katy parents arrive and we really get cracking putting some plans on the computer to print off and change up!

Day six, the kids all go to the aquarium, and my great friend Eric Todd arrives from Yuma and we get on with planning and of course just hanging out.

Day seven, all the relatives need to be at the airport by 530, and i think for the first time ever beth's alarm does not go off, so after a rush, they all make their flights on time, leaving me, Beth the kids, and Eric in a quiet house.

And so that's briefly the first week, it was kind of a blur.

Starting into the second week (last week actually) sunday evening beth loads the kids up and i kiss them goodbye for a week so Eric and I can fully devote our attention to making a clean comfortable space to live.

Eric and I ended up painting and tiling the bedroom, and living/kitchenette, not too bad for a day and half or so of work. we get to the plumbing though and it's a mess. there were lots of lines going seemingly everywhere, so i spent a little time making some straight runs, and i find leaks in areas i didn't even touch. i wanted to keep my head in the sand and not take on re-plumbing the whole thing, but as i peered inside the clogged galvanized lines, and unscrewed the cover for the vanity in the bathroom revealing the literal rat's nest of foil wrappers and rat poo, i knew the plumbing would have to be done.

also in the bathroom the floor seemed a little soft, so we start peeling back the layers of vinyl (yes, about 5 layers in this one add-on bathroom, more on layers in the rest of the house later) we find the floor to have living maggoty termites in it, so out it comes as well. we ended up completely gutting the bathroom and starting from scratch which turned out to be a really good thing because it was GROSS.

we put in a prefab corner shower, and possibly did it right for the first time in history! we used a half-bag of thinset underneath it to give it a very solid feel, not like flexy plastic.

I'm writing this stream of consciousness right now, and will break it up into a couple posts, so more to come later! again, i owe a HUGE thanks to Eric Todd for spending a whole week down here helping me rebuild, and giving my family a clean comfortable place to live while we undertake the rest of the house.