New Orleans, Day 2
6:00am. Honestly. those who know me may think I'm making that time up, that I may not even realize that time exists. But I met it this Monday...and was displeased. But I got up anyway. I put on my work clothes and headed out with the rest of the groggy people to make the short trip to Atonement Church for breakfast. Everyone was relatively chipper and ready to start work for the week. I had to admit I was a little excited at the prospect of doing some demolition knee deep in mud. Seth finally gave us our work order and paired us up with Ed. We all loaded up in the minivan and blared out new-found favorite radio station, DIVA (no joke) all the way to the work site, some 30-40 minutes away. Now, let me explain about DIVA a bit. It's freaking fantastic. I take pride in being the one that discovered it first and forcing people to listen until they couldn't deny that disco was probably custom made for construction work. Why more crews don't use it on the job site is beyond me. Seriously, who can deny the productivity gains by listening to DOnna Summer and Curtis Mayfield. No one, that's who.
Getting back to the project, we finally pulled up to our house at the end of a cul de sac and unloaded Ed's trailer of tools and wheelbarrows. We also got to put on our nifty haz-mat outfit for the first time. Including rubber boots, a painters suit, work gloves, reperator, goggles, and sombrero (optional, for Heather only). Apparently, another group had worked on the house before us and left it appx 65% finished. Ed described this as "gravy" work, in that it was going to be really easy. I don't think he realized just how inept our group could be when we put our mind to it though. What was supposed to take the rest of the afternoon ended up taking two and a half days. Take THAT expectations! I can only describe my construction technique as "the Tazmanian Devil with a sledge hammer stuck in a small space". I should probably talk about what goes on in a normal house.
Katrina was a big honkin hurricane. It reached further inland than most other ever dream of and managed to break the levys in New Orleans on its way. 200,000 homes were destroyed over 90,000 acres of land, most by flood damage rather than hurricane. I mean heck, hurricanes come through every other week so you can bet people know how to build homes to withstand those. What those homes couldn't resist was up to 12 feet of water to come rushing across the city and sit there for a few weeks. The water caused all all sorts of mold to grow on houses, trees, etc, and it's because of this that so much is ruined. So here we are 6 months later, coming around to each of the houses and cleaning up. First you get a sledge hammer and crowbar, and break down the front door as well as any others while your at it. Windows too. This is because a) you probably can't open the door what with the warped wood and amount of stuff blocking its way. b) it smells like an unemptied refridgerator was left in the heat for half a year (it was) and the more breeze we can get going the better. Now that the house is opened the crew can start unloading everything in it. I mean everything. Mold ruins everything except ceramics and even those were pretty grody so excluding important legal documents one may run across, everything gets thrown in the street out in front of the house. A lot of times the owner will be notified when their house will be worked on so they'll be on hand to save certain items if they choose. This pile of stuff gets surprisingly large and sometimes starts rivaling the house itself in size. Once the house is empty the drywall needs to be brought down as well as any nails protruding from the studs. Ultimately, all that should be left is tile (maybe) and hard wood, which can be sprayed with bleach to kill the last of the mold. This leaves the house looking very skeletal and makes you wonder if it would be cheaper to bull doze the whole place and start afresh. Sometimes it actually would be cheaper, but apparanlt the owner gets more insurance money if the house has been cleaned up especially to the point we bring it to. So we're still helping.
Back to our house. Most of our crew began pulling out nails from the studs and tearing down the remaining drywall. I took it upon myself to rip apart a series of small stairs leading up to an indoor hot tub. there was also a tiny bathroom next to it that had been untouched so I had the privelidge of tearing the entire thing down around my head. Mirrors came crashing down, a kitchen sink exploded, the shower stall fell into the tub. The debris alone piled at my feet. You can probably tell this is the highlight of my week and most of the reason I came down in the first place. Demolition is just plain fun, especially when there's not much to save. Still, the first day was slow, and there were frequent breaks for water and fresh air. (respirators are difficult to breathe in for long periods of time).
At the end of the day we drove back home and showered before going over to Atonement for dinner. We had a homemade chili over rice that was bursting with enough sausage to reconstruct a pig or two. It was nice to be able to sit in the tent and zone out for an hour after working hard all day. After going back home to Christ the King, I wasn't feeling well and tried to get sleep as soon as possible. I had no idea that everyone else was feeling the same as I was. Everyone that is, except the vegetarians! We were highly suspicious of any meat for the rest of the week.
Getting back to the project, we finally pulled up to our house at the end of a cul de sac and unloaded Ed's trailer of tools and wheelbarrows. We also got to put on our nifty haz-mat outfit for the first time. Including rubber boots, a painters suit, work gloves, reperator, goggles, and sombrero (optional, for Heather only). Apparently, another group had worked on the house before us and left it appx 65% finished. Ed described this as "gravy" work, in that it was going to be really easy. I don't think he realized just how inept our group could be when we put our mind to it though. What was supposed to take the rest of the afternoon ended up taking two and a half days. Take THAT expectations! I can only describe my construction technique as "the Tazmanian Devil with a sledge hammer stuck in a small space". I should probably talk about what goes on in a normal house.
Katrina was a big honkin hurricane. It reached further inland than most other ever dream of and managed to break the levys in New Orleans on its way. 200,000 homes were destroyed over 90,000 acres of land, most by flood damage rather than hurricane. I mean heck, hurricanes come through every other week so you can bet people know how to build homes to withstand those. What those homes couldn't resist was up to 12 feet of water to come rushing across the city and sit there for a few weeks. The water caused all all sorts of mold to grow on houses, trees, etc, and it's because of this that so much is ruined. So here we are 6 months later, coming around to each of the houses and cleaning up. First you get a sledge hammer and crowbar, and break down the front door as well as any others while your at it. Windows too. This is because a) you probably can't open the door what with the warped wood and amount of stuff blocking its way. b) it smells like an unemptied refridgerator was left in the heat for half a year (it was) and the more breeze we can get going the better. Now that the house is opened the crew can start unloading everything in it. I mean everything. Mold ruins everything except ceramics and even those were pretty grody so excluding important legal documents one may run across, everything gets thrown in the street out in front of the house. A lot of times the owner will be notified when their house will be worked on so they'll be on hand to save certain items if they choose. This pile of stuff gets surprisingly large and sometimes starts rivaling the house itself in size. Once the house is empty the drywall needs to be brought down as well as any nails protruding from the studs. Ultimately, all that should be left is tile (maybe) and hard wood, which can be sprayed with bleach to kill the last of the mold. This leaves the house looking very skeletal and makes you wonder if it would be cheaper to bull doze the whole place and start afresh. Sometimes it actually would be cheaper, but apparanlt the owner gets more insurance money if the house has been cleaned up especially to the point we bring it to. So we're still helping.
Back to our house. Most of our crew began pulling out nails from the studs and tearing down the remaining drywall. I took it upon myself to rip apart a series of small stairs leading up to an indoor hot tub. there was also a tiny bathroom next to it that had been untouched so I had the privelidge of tearing the entire thing down around my head. Mirrors came crashing down, a kitchen sink exploded, the shower stall fell into the tub. The debris alone piled at my feet. You can probably tell this is the highlight of my week and most of the reason I came down in the first place. Demolition is just plain fun, especially when there's not much to save. Still, the first day was slow, and there were frequent breaks for water and fresh air. (respirators are difficult to breathe in for long periods of time).
At the end of the day we drove back home and showered before going over to Atonement for dinner. We had a homemade chili over rice that was bursting with enough sausage to reconstruct a pig or two. It was nice to be able to sit in the tent and zone out for an hour after working hard all day. After going back home to Christ the King, I wasn't feeling well and tried to get sleep as soon as possible. I had no idea that everyone else was feeling the same as I was. Everyone that is, except the vegetarians! We were highly suspicious of any meat for the rest of the week.