1. View from the street after renovation

    In the span of six months, this blighted property built in the 1890s was converted into a cozy little home with new wood siding and exterior doors, much-needed roof and chimney repairs, and all-new gutters and downspouts.

  2. Exterior views before and during construction

    The house had ancient window AC units, flimsy aluminum awnings, vinyl siding, and fake shutters.

    It was also missing wood siding boards, chimney bricks, and roof coping tiles, which allowed the rain inside.

    Cat’s claw had overtaken one corner of the house, its vines pushing the wood siding off as they grew underneath.

    One of the sideyard setbacks was only 12 inches, so contractors had to set up in the neighbor’s yard to remove vines and replace the siding.

  3. Front rooms before demolition

    A fake fireplace in a yellow living room was the first thing that greeted you upon entering.

    Next was a beige bedroom with a coal-burning fireplace and closet that made the room layout awkward.

    The second bedroom was a room-within-a-room you had to walk through in order to access the kitchen or bathroom.

    The flooring in the first bedroom was masonite on top of wallpaper, while the second featured linoleum on top of vinyl composite tile on top of stapled sheets of lauan.

  4. Back rooms before demolition

    The shelves in the corner of the second bedroom had an earthy odor due to all the vines that had burrowed into this part of the house.

    The original bathroom was old and neglected, and suffered from severe water damage and rot.

    The door from the side yard to the kitchen was covered in layers of grease from the stove.

    The sagging popcorn ceilings in the kitchen were the first sign of decades of water damage at the roof.

  5. Demolition Plan

    Due to the original placement of the bedroom doors, you had to zig-zag from room to room since so much of the floor plan was devoted to circulation.

    The wall between the first two rooms will be removed to make an open gallery space which relocates all of the circulation to a straight path along the northeast wall. No more zig-zagging through the middle of each room!

  6. Back rooms after demolition

    The roof and walls of the demolished kitchen and bathroom resting in a pile. The rest of the rear structure would soon join that pile.

    The attic had knob-and-tube electrical wiring and natural gas lines for wall-mounted sconces (which are very much in non-compliance with modern building codes).

    The rear structure containing the kitchen and bathroom had to be completely demolished and rebuilt after removing the damaged structural members.

    Some of the barge boards and siding on the back wall of the bedroom were so rotted you could see through them. The horizontal bands on the lower part of the walls are from wood lath that held the original plaster which crumbled to pieces once the drywall on top of it was removed.

  7. View rendering View photo

    Dining area after demolition

    The back half of the gutted gallery space will become the kitchen and dining area. The window on the left was too rotten to be salvaged and was replaced with French doors, and a large floor heater between the window and the doorway was removed, with new flooring to match the original patched in.

    The barge board wall between the gallery space and the bedroom on the other side of the wall was left exposed to reveal the house’s humble origins.

  8. Head-on view of galley kitchen

    To the lower right is the HVAC return with a custom CNC-milled panel that covers a standard return grille mounted in the wall behind it. Directly above the window is a similar custom panel for an HVAC supply grille.

    The white panels mounted to the face of the ceiling soffit and on the face of the HVAC return column are from IKEA, and some of them are just cabinet doors. All of the cabinets are from IKEA in standard sizes.

  9. Living room from entry

    Finished view of the living room in the front half of the gallery space.

    The entry door is right behind us, and if you look closely, there’s a museum board model of the house in this photo.

  10. Bedroom

    The ductwork for the rear lean-to needed to transition from the attic space of the main volume into the rafter space of the lean-to, so a new soffit was installed in the bedroom to give it enough room to make the jog into the rear of the house.

  11. Bedroom looking toward Laundry

    The blue vestibule on the left is the laundry room and the doorway on the right leads to a 5' × 12' walk-in closet. Just inside the closet opening is a sliding door with a full-height mirror mounted to it.

  12. Walk-in closet

    Just on the other side of the left wall is the laundry room, so there’s a 12" × 18" “laundry chute” for tossing dirty laundry straight into the washer.

    The jalousie window is from the original bathroom and was repaired and reinstalled to bring diffused natural light into the closet.

  13. Bedroom looking toward side yard

    New French Doors from the bedroom open to the side yard, providing private access to outside.

    The gallery space is to the left, and the laundry room and bathroom are through the cased opening on the right.

  14. Bathroom

    There’s a narrow skylight above the back of the tub, and the soap niche extends all the way up to it.

    All of the tub fixtures are centered precisely on tile joint intersections, and the wall return above the low glass tile wall and the low wall at the tub lip are exactly one tile wide.

  15. Section

    The bedroom and gallery space are in the original barge board volume of the house, with the rebuilt lean-to at the rear housing the laundry room, bathroom, and walk-in closet.

    A fold-down ironing board was mounted to the inside face of the left-hand laundry room door, and the inside face of the right-hand laundry room door had shelves and hooks for a mop, broom, and cleaning items. There’s also a small storage closet above the washer and dryer.

  16. Site Plan

    The house measures 15' × 55' for a total floor area of 825 square feet. The side yard is 12' wide, and the rear yard is just over 8' deep and was covered by an old shed with a tin roof.

  17. Publications

    The house was featured on a Preservation Resource Center home tour in the Faubourg St. John neighborhood of New Orleans, and was also the subject of a few magazine articles.

    Preservation In Print
    March 2012

    An Ingrained Heritage
    New Orleans Port Record
    Summer 2011

    Cabinets as the Centerpiece
    New Orleans Homes & Lifestyles
    Winter 2011