Sweat equity

So this is what the term sweat equity, means! Yeah, he gutted that first room by himself!

The real fun begins!

We just keep having one productive day after another. This has got to stop!! Thursday we bought a cute old pick-up (photo later) for a good price and then took off for New Oleans. I dropped Mike at the house and I headed to City Hall (o nooo! on my own?) and had no trouble in getting the final building permit. By the time I got home, he'd done this!

Long Time, No Post

The fun has really begun, so the time to post has shrunk. We signed papers on Tuesday- after a bit of last minute where-did-that-electronic-money-transfer-go panic. But it all worked out and the former owner went back to trying to empty the house. He's left us a lot of great things.

Wednesday we received permission from the Historical District Landmarks Commission to do all the work, and almost finished getting a building permit. For all that's NOT working right after Katrina, the city government has really done well to expedite that whole process. As we walked around City Hall chatting with people, getting papers, filling out forms, joking with folks and talking about the GREAT Saints' game Monday night, Mike kept comparing it to the government offices in Cairo. He spent many hours over many years in those crowded, smoky, inefficient offices - this place is GREAT!!

More photos later.

Colors! Your opinion wanted!

These are the two closest neighbors around us.

As you can see from the drawing from 1854, the house was originally white, with green shutters. We learned a couple of interesting things about New Orleans colors recently. First, white was basically the only color they had in large quantities in the early 19th century, so most houses were white. Second, in order to make the green, powdered copper was mixed into the paint! It was highly toxic and started out a bright, almost apple-green shade. Over the years it would gradually turn darker, which brought people to gradually think of Vieux Carre (French Quarter) green as a dark color. Today houses are anything BUT white in this crazy city.

You chime in after looking at the next few pics - what color we should choose for our cottage?

With the roof being slate tiles of blues, grays, some green and some purples, maybe a blue would be nice. By the way, the x painted on the house is common here. It is left from Katrina: when rescuers checked a house, they made notes about what they found in this way. Some are high on second story walls, near the roof!

I was really thinking a soft yellow might be nice.

Bryan, our real estate agent, says this is a great color - and very "in". This is a popular French Quarter hotel.

This is the house today. It's in a quiet neighborhood just a block from the French Quarter and there are lots of interesting houses and interesting people around. We can hardly wait to get in and get to work!

Well, here is the earliest drawing we have of our Creole cottage - from an 1854 Sheriff's sale. At this point, in fact, we are a bit presumptious in calling it "ours" since we won't sign papers for another 3 weeks. But we're too excited - and need to make too many decisions quickly - to wait. We'll post more details later, but for starters, what do you think about the doors? Do we return them to the original placement as in this drawing? Or do we keep the 1930s "storefront" corner door in the previous photo?