b.rox

Today as I took the girl to school, I spotted a pile of furniture on the curb, on Iberville just past Jeff Davis. Flooded furniture. The flood was three years ago. And it struck me the houses here are like patrons at a party where poison punch has been passed. They stand for a while. [...]

I took a walk down Tulane Avenue last week. I had my camera with me, and I took some pictures. Tulane Avenue is a major thoroughfare which runs through my neighborhood, Mid-City, and continues all the way into the Central Business District. These pictures were taken in the blocks near Carrollton Avenue, which is where [...]

My friends PJ & Andrea are selling their flooded Broadmoor house on eBay. Their write-up is kind of funny and kind of sad. Best of luck, y’all.

Check out this presentation on the rebuilding of Xavier University (PDF, about three and half MB). Astonishing pictures of the flooded campus.

On the way home from a science fair in Algiers, my boss and I came across a rather astonishing sight. I don’t think the camera can really capture the weirdness, but I tried. Click for the photoset:

Mike Leonard and his lovely wife Mardi were in New Orleans for Jazz Fest. On Monday, I took them on the mandatory misery tour. We drove through Lakeview, then stopped at the London Avenue Canal breach and examined the work under way. Then we headed down to the Lower Ninth Ward. I’m sorry to say [...]

Some while back I signed up with the Preservation Resource Center to have our house inspected by an expert. Today, it happened. I was visited by an architect and an engineer, Remi and Bill, volunteers from San Francisco. They were quite taken with our house, but more importantly they didn’t see any major problem arising [...]

According to the Damage Assessment Wizard on the City of New Orleans website, our house “is NOT substantially damaged.” It also says: “You may continue to FastTrack Permitting and you will NOT be required to elevate your structure in order to secure a permit to restore your building.” Perhaps that’s because our property is listed [...]

Though my box of journals was left on the bottom floor of our house during the flooding of New Orleans, all is not lost. I brought Volume Five back to Indiana with me and photographed each page. I’ve posted the whole set.

My mother-in-law is faxing the following claim to our insurance adjuster for the contents of our house which were ruined by floodwaters. I estimate our losses at $43,000. We were insured for $25,000, with a $1,000 deductible, so I’m expecting a full payout. Utility Room: $13,000 Washer, dryer, bicycles, power tools, desk, magazine rack, Sunsetter [...]

My dear friend Mike Kaplan came by our house this afternoon to assess the electrical situation. You see, Mike is a licensed electrician, and right about now an electrician is the best friend you can have. He looked things over and assured me that we could probably get the bottom level of the house re-wired [...]

Tearing down plaster and lath walls is a lot slower-going than tearing down sheetrock. I’d like to think some of these old plaster walls could be saved, but the prognosis is not good so far. One bonus: I’m uncovering plenty of old termite damage. We knew it was there. Now we can fix it.

Ironically, Xy’s dollhouse was flooded to approximately the same level as our own, slightly larger house.

The room we’ve taken to calling the “craft room” in our house used to be a kitchen. The previous owners built a new kitchen upstairs, but left the old cabinets, with sink, downstairs. We never liked those cabinets. They were cheap and somewhat nasty. After the flood they were very nasty. Particle board doesn’t hold [...]

Bit of a breakthrough today. I finished cleaning the nasty, flood-damaged stuff out of our utility room. (Litter box full of month-old floodwater — yuck!) I swept it out, and was feeling a little better. Then, just for the hell of it, I punched a hole in the wall. Before I knew it I was [...]

Just met with Roland Graybill, the adjuster for our flood claim, a lean, long-haired Southern dude. Affable. He took some measurements and some photos and some notes. I learned that the insurance will not be “paying limits” as previously intimated. Instead we’ll get some lesser amount which Mr. Graybill seemed to think would be enough [...]

I went back to my neighborhood today. The flood-damaged crap which Michael and I had hauled out from my house to the curb was still there, a huge pile. In fact, it was even bigger than we left it, as a number of homes in the neighborhood are apparently being gutted. Piles of refuse line [...]

The scratchy throat passed. It was followed by a runny nose, which lasted for a day, but has passed now too. Many people have confirmed this is a bad time for allergies in this part of the country. Yet I still haven’t departed for New Orleans. That’s because I talked to my insurance adjuster and [...]

Michael took a great picture of me standing next to all the soggy, nasty junk we pulled out of the flooded lower floor of my house.

As we head north on I-55, I’m thinking of all the stuff I still need to do with my house in New Orleans: Need to clean out the back room downstairs, which we called the craft room. It’s a terrible mess. We had to break the door just to get in. I didn’t have the [...]