lift & separate

so it doesn't look like much. but these are some of the jacks that were used to level my house.



it's a shame that the photos are so boring because this is actually pretty damn exciting. of all the gazillions of dollars that i've spent, this is by far the one thing that i'm happiest with.



if i had a decent 'before' picture of the porch, you could see quite clearly the difference. alas, i don't. it makes a huge difference, though, that when you walk in the house you no longer list & roll down hill. i can't find the picture with the crew foreman demonstrating the height of the final lift by sticking his hand in the gap between the house and the jack and splaying his fingers, but it turned out that it was raised about 6 inches iin the highest spot. awesomeness.



in the course of making the house level, the workers also discovered that i have subsurface drainage. this is huge. part of the reason for the whole funhouse lean to the place is because of standing water. oh, ok. the other part is because new orleans is really a swamp and everything sinks. having water pool in my backyard, though, does not help. so the leveling crew (orleans shoring) called out the plumbers they work with, and we got to work finding out the story with the drainage.



the newly discovered/uncovered drain runs about 70 feet down the side of my house. according to the plumbers and the shoring guys, the drainage system was put in around 1920 and is fairly standard in houses in mid city. to find out the state of my drainage, first they ran a snake down the length.



they put the hose in the pipe, both to gauge when the drain was opened and also to help work the snake down the line. it took well over an hour, but soon the water actually started to flow.



then they pulled out the video camera, and ran it through the pipe. this is how we found out that although the water will flow through the pipe, there are three breaks along the line.




next step is to have them come back out and fix the breaks. when they do, they're also going to put in two more ... drain openings (there's probably a name for them but i don't know what it is) to increase the surface area where water can enter the pipe. i'm going to call them next week, as i wanted to take a week off from writing huge checks.

magnetic attraction

of all the things i could not do this weekend, i did one thing and i did it well.

the front door on the tenant's side of the house. you can see it's a burglar door, iron bars & all. it was repainted about 6 months ago, and my contractor (who i'm beginning to think is retarded) never put the screen back in. so it lets in bugs. lots & lots of bugs. i happen to hate bugs, but they love me.

so i got the big bright idea to get a screen. but i wasn't about to spline it. so i also bought a bunch of magnets. a whole bunch. my neighbor happened to be outside raking leaves, so i asked him to lend a hand. he took a look and decided that magnets alone wouldn't do it, so he went and got some gorilla glue tape. we taped and magneted and now it's bea-u-ti-ful.



here's brett, my neighbor, with the newly bug-proofed screen.

everything but the kitchen stove!

ok. i decided to buy the cabinets. but wait! it's not just cabinets! it's cabinets plus


a microwave! but wait! there's more! there's a


dishwasher! and yet that's STILL not all! there's also


a refrigerator! (the guys at the house where i bought these were not happy to see the fridge go.) and yet even that's not all!


granite countertops! (there must be about 20 feet of this. and it's heavy. very heavy.) they even saved the crown molding and the screws. and, oh ... the glass-fronted wall cabinets have under-cabinet lights, which they put in there, too.

so i still have to configure it, but most of the kitchen decisions have now been made, courtesy of a great deal from craigslist.

the amazing thing is that it fits my personal sytle--bohemian thriftshopper--to a T.

ready made?

so i found these cabinets on craigslist. i sent an email sunday, got an email with phone number in return on monday, and called about them today. the woman said she's had a lot of inquiries, and has decided she wants to sell everything in
one fell swoop. everything includes a dishwasher, side-by-side fridge, and a stainless steel offset sink with garbage disposal. (the fridge & dishwasher are stainless, too.).



went over there today. while it's not what i'd choose if i had a ton of money, the whole thing is only 3 grand.



i took some measurements and counted the number of units. now i have to figure out how much wall space i have & how much they'd take up. i know, for instance, that there's an extra corner cabinet that i wouldn't be able to use.



but it would knock a bunch of money off what it's going to cost me new, and i'd be able to do the cooktop in the island with a downdraft and built in oven with the money i save.
so what do i do?

just what i need ... another hole in the

ceiling.


this is supposed to be the door to the attic. the existing 'door' is a window in the roof. this is better, but the 10' ladder i bought, that's supposed to fit ceilings up to 10'3", is too short. grrrr. i completely blame my contractor, who when i asked him what size ladder to buy, shrugged his shoulders and said, '10 foot. yeah. 10 foot.' ppphhht.



this is the dumpster on the 2nd go round. this, by the way, is the *last* go round for the $300-a-pop dumpster. everything else i'm stuffing in the regular garbage bit by bit.



another shot of the completely denuded kitchen. pray for me.

and finally ...


had to change the light in the bathroom the other day. it was like climbing to the top of mt. everest.

wall gone!

ok. so this is what it looks like with no wall there.



and this is what it looks like with the cabinets gone.



it's actually kind of traumatizing. i laughed out loud when i saw the window.
i could be wrong, but i think my house--the half i live in, the half that's currently being rehabbed--used to be a stand-alone single shotgun. at some point the owners decided to put in a garage, and instead of mucking up the side yard, they put it in front of the house. that involved some reconfiguration of the front door, which is at the very left-most corner of the original structure, and necessitated constructing a porch, because now there was just about 4 feet from the side of the garage to the property line. apparently the garage went over so well, they decided to go into business for themselves, and constructed another large room that runs the length of the garage, plus another 50 or so feet. the interior wall of this new room is actually the exterior of the original house; hence, any windows on the tenant side were taken out and sealed up.




this is what the house--without the wall and without the cabinets--looks like from the living room.


it's all either terribly exciting or terribly anxiety producing.

score!

during my usual weekend haunting of lowe's, i found a track light for ... MORE THAN 50% OFF!!!!!!!! woot!

i'm still a long way off from having lights installed--hell. i don't even know what the kitchen is going to look like--but the $75 i paid yesterday beats the crap out of the $175 they usually sell for.

<finishes patting self on back. goes back to work.>