Day Four

Today is Justin’s birthday! Before we tell you how we celebrated, the Fab Five want to say hi to their friends and family (and potential dates?) and to introduce you to some of our friends in the Ninth Ward. Watch their video below.



When we woke up, it was warm! 61 degrees! No fleece jackets, hats, or socks inside flip-flops! The breakfast crew made powdered eggs and added rehydrated spinach, velveeta, and diced canned tomatoes. We were true to our word and moved more quickly to leave for our jobs today. What a start!

We feared rain, but decided that we were going to make a go for painting after all. Chris and Shawny took Sarah to pick out her housepaint and were thrilled to help her find just what she wanted: bright lime green (Elijah called it “tennis ball”) and a light yellowish tan (that looked a lot like the color of our pancake batter). Sarah says that she has been dreaming of a house this color for a long time and she was unstoppable in her pursuit of just the colors she wanted. She found them.

Three teams joined forces to tackle the paint prep and begin the job of painting the entire exterior of the house. The other two teams stayed at Don’s house around the corner and either sanded floors or worked on trim. The levels of energy, effort, and diligence that every one of us demonstrated was awesome even to us.

Shawny told us before we came that when we are doing finish work on people’s homes, “Good enough is NOT good enough.” We all agreed to do our work in the way that we would want it done in our own homes, not leaving sloppy edges or problematic quirks that will annoy the people we are trying to help. So far, we are really working to honor that commitment.

As we painted, Sarah sat in outside with us and basked in the glory of her neighbors’ comments, whether they were supportive or not. Most people seemed to support her color choices, saying that it was about time that someone brightened up the neighborhood. A few thought that the colors were “loud,” which only convinced Sarah to gather other neighbors in the street to sway the opponents’ positions on the shades she had selected: “He says that it’s too loud! What do you say to him about that? Isn’t it time to brighten things up around here? Isn’t that what you said?” She frequently bounced that comments off of us as we applied the paint: “Did you hear what she said? She said that it is the prettiest color she has ever seen!” Many of us even changed our positions on the colors once we saw how happy the paint job made Sarah. We started calling it the “Happy House” and Sarah sat out front and beamed all day.

At Don’s house, the floor-sanding went on and on, but there was no doubt that we were succeeding at getting to the original wood. We bought extra sanders so that we could have one person edging each wall while another covered the center of the room with the rented large-scale floor sander. We still have quite a few square feet to cover, so we will plug away in the days to come.

The other main jobs at Don’s were the hanging of the window trim and the texturing of the walls. Though we had pre-painted and pre-cut the trim, tons of work went into making the properly-proportioned pieces fit the slight tilt of the windows (not unlike the door problem that our six door hangers encountered yesterday). Wall texturing turned out to be quite a kick, and everyone in the house at the time took a spin at spraying the thinned joint compound over the walls to help to even them out. Some of us, of course, had a few random (and not so random) hits on each other’s clothes, hair, or shoes, but no one seemed to mind much.

When 4:30 arrived, we moved more quickly than ever to gather and clean our gear, as we knew that we had a birthday to celebrate! Justin’s mom had told Chris to take us ALL out to dinner ON HER to acknowledge the occasion. Because we knew that the French Quarter would be a madhouse tonight due to tomorrow’s playoff game at the Superdome, we called our friend Lisa Trigo and asked her to find us a great small family-owned place that served REAL Louisiana food.

She found us Portside, on the levee side of the Mississippi River out in Destrehan. We filled the entire place on our own. We also wiped out every boiled crawfish the place had prepared, especially after our lessons in crawfish-eating from the restaurant’s owner, David. People tried all kinds of Cajun and creole foods and Lisa came with her husband Bruce, their daughter Lauren, Lauren’s friend Katie, and all-around character Floyd to help teach us how to speak different jargons of New Orleans as they told us some of the corniest jokes of all time. Partially because the restaurant turned up the music when we arrived, partially because we were laughing hysterically, and partially because we were just plain wired, the little levee restaurant was roaring throughout our stay. They had only recently reopened and it was a special night to have a huge bunch of out-of-town guests come gather around their platters of boiled crawfish and dig in.

We read messages from the website as we drove home and even though we have to get up early tomorrow morning (we have to be at work at 7:15 a.m.!), we kept buzzing and humming in the bus until after midnight. A happy morning, a Happy House, and a happy birthday. Lucky us!


Vanessa works away at painting Sarah’s sidewalls. As you can see, she is a master painter!


This picture was taken right before we ended our workday. The house is coming along great! The green is a very happy color, and it makes us smile a lot. In the front of the house two members of the Fab Five, Megan and Kate are interviewing Sarah. The paintwork being done on the roof by Matt, Soraya, and Elijah was completed by the time we left Sarah’s. They did awesome!


Feke and Tommy work away while getting great tips from Dan. Dan is, in fact, our “driver”, but as you can see he does much more for us than just drive. He is a great addition to our team, and we will miss his hard work and dedication to the group when is replaced by our veteran driver Leo. (But Leo will be awesome too)



Check out that floor. Apparently the contractor didn’t believe in a drop cloth so we have been working to sand through paint, plaster, and the previous stain. It’s hard work, but Mannschaft gets it done.


Dan the Man with a master plan to scrape the flaking paint off of Sarah’s house. Dan is our awesome bus driver and we are so glad he is here to share this experience with us.


Aaron expertly nails the freshly painted molding to the window.


The ladies work to make sure Sarah’s house is the brightest lime green the street has ever seen. The color is a nice contrast to the faded paint we are used to seeing.


Justin teaches Shawny how to use the texturizing gun to texturize the walls of the closet we drywalled.


Sarah’s neighbors relax and play music for us as we work and commented on how the house is brightening up the neighborhood.


This is Red’s house that was built in the mid 1840s. We cleaned out his garden so he would be able to grow onions, garlic, tomatoes, and collared greens to share with his neighbors. While we worked in the garden he told us his experiences of Hurricane Katrina as he evacuated to Mississippi and lived out of his car for three weeks. During this time Rosie stayed in his attic.


Team Fab Five interviewing Sarah on her Katrina experiences in her front yard. The interview will be posted on the webpage for everyone see.


A Sight Seeing Bus: This picture was taken outside of Sarah’s house as we were painting and happens frequently as we work. We’re not exactly sure how we feel about this regular occurrence because there are two different sides of the story. They are bringing money into the city and seeing what really happened, but on the other hand, they aren’t out there helping us.


Sarah poses in front of her freshly painted neon green house and commented that the new paint color is a sign of change. She believes that the color is bright and happy just like her.


Kate diligently works on the last piece of sheet rock, which completed Don’s bathroom. She then moved on to finish sheet rocking the living room. Go Kate!


Vanessa does the final scrapping for Sarah’s house before the crew starts painting.


Bree’s lovely teal tank compliments Sarah’s green house, which she worked on all day.


Lindsay, Yessenia, and Rachel pose with Sarah in front of her newly painted house. She commented on how her house brightens and adds some energy to the neighborhood.


As the day winded down, Rachel and Vince show their enthusiasm of a hard day’s work of painting and sheet rocking.


When we started work on Sarah’s house we didn’t know how much of it we could complete. As soon as we found out that the Fab Five, the ONEders, and the Knucklebusters were going to help out we were sure that a lot was going to be accomplished. We were right!


We started off the day chipping away more access paint while priming spots that needed covering. This is the house before we began painting the amazing green that Sarah chose for the house.

Day Three

We know that most readers of this blog are interested in the sights and sounds of New Orleans and the progress that has been made in the Gulf Coast since August of 2005. Still, we also know that people are interested in the weird life that we are living in our unusual New Orleans home. The team called Mannschaft (Emily, Shane, Linzy, Janeva, and Tim) provided this video insight into our mealtime experiences.



(Special Note: If you did not see yesterday’s video offering, please click back to Day Two and see a wonderful piece prepared by the Transformers. Our interface with YouTube has messed us up a bit as we have tried to upload things, but we finally got that one posted tonight.)

Today we awoke to a rather pleasant morning. Even though the temperature was roughly the same as yesterday’s (47 degrees F), it felt better than it had on Wednesday to get up and face the world in our lovely dining room. Our breakfast crew made pancakes and hard salami for a different kind of morning treat. Despite our best efforts, it still took us 2.5 hours to get on the bus and drive off to our jobsite. We vowed to do better tomorrow.

We returned to the upper Ninth Ward and made our way into Don’s house again, where teams broke up the day’s jobs and got going right away. One team returned to Sarah’s house to complete prep for painting as soon as we can be sure that there is no threat of rain. One team became the Drywall Police as they circulated through the house and put the finishing touches on the patches we installed yesterday. One team finished tearing up the second subfloor in the kitchen. One team tested the idea of sanding the hardwood floors in Don’s house to see if they could be revived (as it turns out, we think that they can), and the other team became assistants to Justin as he rebuilt the rotted-out bathroom floor, sometimes standing at room level, sometimes crouching in the crawl space underneath the house.

Our wall patches got incredibly smooth and are now ready to be textured so that all imperfections will be largely imperceptible. We even took up some new challenges as we noticed that there were areas that had been poorly hung by the professionals who preceded us; we tore them out and redid them. When the Drywall Police (really the Transformers; if you know the tune to the Saturday morning TV show by that name, you must sing it in your head as you read this) finished their review of all things sheetrock, they moved on to painting, measuring, and mitering trim pieces for all of the doors, windows, and floorboards. Everyone worked hard all day long.

We had some new visitors today at Don’s house, including his father, Leroy, whose house we cleared last January. Leroy hasn’t made a lot of progress on his house since we left and the already-terrible aftermath of Katrina was made even worse when his lovely wife, Odessa, passed away suddenly and unexpectedly last summer. We talked to Leroy about his current (though temporary) living situation in Baton Rouge and we expressed our sadness over his loss of Odessa. He told us that he just hadn’t been able to keep moving forward on his rebuilding once she was gone. He hoped that we could help him pick things back up, but we are unfortunately unable to help until he finishes his plumbing, electrical work, and heating system. There is no way for him to accomplish these tasks while we are here, so there is no way for us to take his house to the next step. We wish we could.

The other new visitors today were Don’s wife, Troylyn, and their son, known as “Little Don.” They currently live in an apartment in Metairie as they wait for the house on North Claiborne to be ready for move in. We might have to stop calling “Little Don” by that particular nickname, now that he has grown about a foot since we were here last year; as he made his way through the house greeting the folks that he met then, each of them went nuts over how tall he has gotten. In every room, Troylyn and Little Don just kept saying “thank you, thank you, thank you; this means so much to us.” All of us got to feel the sense of anticipation that this family shares over the prospect that they will soon be HOME.

Once they left we hurried to finish our jobs before we lost the light of day. There is electricity on the lot and we run lines into the house to run our power tools, but there are no light fixtures to use to illuminate our work. Things were all moving appropriately toward their ends when suddenly the bathroom workers got a big surprise; the water main that they had shut off suddenly was turned back on, spraying water up, out, and through all of the work that they had done all day. Justin immediately threw his whole body against the gushing pipe until someone figured out how to stop the flow. Everyone was entirely dejected over the prospect that we would have to rip out sheetrock and start over again. Closer inspection, though, revealed that Justin had, in fact, saved the day, so that things did not get wet enough to be ruined. Once we realized that our work would not need to be redone, we started dancing and singing all through the house.

That mood brought us home to a lovely dinner (described in the video above) that led us into our group meeting for the night. At our meetings, we read notes that have been posted to our website (see www.stmarys-ca.edu/nola and click “Messages of Support”), we check in on policy changes that we might need to make within our community (tonight’s big new agreement: each person will clean his or her own hair out of the showers when finished), we acknowledge the day’s “Blood, Sweat, and Tears” award winner (tonight it was Tim and Kellie, for showing great attitudes as they worked and for backing up the work of others as well), and we share issues that we would like to celebrate. Tonight we celebrated some excellent pictures (you can guess for yourself which ones we thought were the most amazing), the Verrips brothers (without whom we could not possibly be here doing what we are doing), and our improved ability to adapt to the situation as it unfolded and keep moving to finish the jobs we had started.

We’re growing and changing as a group, as individuals, as workers, and as teams. We can’t wait to see where this is all leading. . . .



As we were packing up the bus to leave, Don’s neighbors were intrigued by our moving home and greeted Kate with wide smiles. We hope to see them again tomorrow.



The sun was shining on us today in the Upper Ninth Ward as we worked diligently at Don’s and Sarah’s house. Through all of the wreckage that was still left on this lot, it was a well-appreciated sign of hope and good things to come.


Chris gives a brief demonstration on proper sanding techniques so that window framing could be cut and painted for Don’s house. Aaron and Julie worked diligently and cutting the lumber, and the framing should be finished tomorrow.


Linzy starts up the rented sanding machine in the entry room of Don’s house. After some intense sanding, the hardwood floors look amazing, considering what they’ve been through in the past.


Today Justin repaired the floor in Don’s bathroom. They secured the floor beams that were rotted from a previous leak. a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsFDXQyDXgfGSzjVH76VDDh9cZytoo8hzdLpsMqTcbk6s1buTIEMsYpc83Ei9bb1D65wp0JNjsWEdpcCn4sDQfz25tJzkFciSrWslAQQGhOYD7d7SPp5I0-hNQu-ZtvEprzrn7fK5U5YDH/s1600-h/DSCN0660.JPG">

A helping hand, Geneva lends Shane a hand on the job. Reminding all of us that a little help goes a long way.


Here we see a group of students painting window molding on cinder blocks. We were not sure at first how we were to get the job done, but with some help form Don and ingenuity from the students we were off to a rolling start.


Full stomachs, hard work, sun… Here Elijah and Soraya spend some time after lunch resting and talking about the day’s work and relaxing after tearing up Don Palmer’s Kitchen floor. Job well done!!!


As the ONEders took turns washing the Pitt’s house, the year old dirt left from the storm washed away into the gutter. The dirt just seemed to keep pouring out the crevasses. After the long overdue cleaning was complete Mr. Pitt’s thanked the ONEders for their generosity.


While working on Don Palmer’s and Sara’s house, their neighbor Mr. Pitts asked us to clean the exterior of his house. Even though we were assigned to Don and Sara’s house, we could never turn a blind eye to someone in need. In this picture Justin is washing clean the tragic history of the Pitts’s house, bring a new hope and a clean slate to rebuild his life.


The rough and tough Knucklebusters use caulk to seal the cracks on Sarah Mercadel’s house. It was difficult for us to do the tops of the windows, but we managed pretty well. Some elbow grease and good team-work brought it together really nicely.


Vanessa Cornejo is wiping the extra caulk from the crack. By the end of the day her fingers got a bit crusty, but it was a small price to pay for a job well done.


The students are stunned as we cross the industrial canal looking at the devastation in the lower ninth ward for the very first time.



After two full days of hard work, Sarah finally lets us take a picture with her now that she has had her hair done. It looks great; and soon, so will her house!


Feke Lauti meticulously seals a piece of trim on Sarah Mercadel’s home in the Upper Ninth Ward. Feke’s touch and focus will contribute to our efforts in New Orleans


Yessenia poses for a quick photo while prepping the bathroom floor for brand new baseboards.


Vince and Jed look on as Kate removes the nails from the bathroom ceiling.


Julie cuts the window molding as Aaron ensures she doesn’t cut something other than the wood.


Juan and Soraya stain the window molding for Don’s new home!


The NOLA crew removes the old bathtub to prepare for the new chic bathroom.


Songs of the Day:
"Better Days" by the Goo Goo Dolls
"Revolution" by Aimee Allen
"Steady as the Rain" by Dolly Parton
"Crescent City" by Lucinda Williams

Day Two

Today we hit the Ninth Ward and got the hang of what our work lives will be like here in New Orleans for the next few weeks. The Transformers (Julie, Matt, Bree, Lindsay, and Justin) provided this video montage of their experience for today. . .



We kicked into full-fledged work mode today and we couldn’t be happier. Our breakfast crew (The Fab Five: Kate, Jed, Yessenia, Vince, Megan) was very ambitious. They rolled out at 7:00 a.m. and cooked powdered eggs with optional ham along with oatmeal and granola. Apparently we enjoyed ourselves a bit too much, as we had quite a tough time tearing ourselves away from our kitchen tent and getting ourselves to Don’s house to start patching his drywall.

We arrived in the Ninth Ward at about 9:30 and Chris gave a quick tutorial refresher in drywall repair. Each team had a bucket of tools that few of us have ever owned before and – even better – we each got our own tool belt! We got a pretty big kick out of wearing tool belts, hard hats, and safety glasses while wielding drywall cutters and power drills to change the appearance of things in Don’s house. Each team took a room and repaired the damage done there by the disgruntled worker we talked about in our last post. Chris circulated constantly and patiently reminded us about how to improve our overall technique. We are lucky to have Chris and his brother Justin with us so that we can learn these important skills and use them in service to the families we have grown to love in New Orleans.

One group was around the corner from Don’s house prepping the exterior of Sarah Mercadel’s house for painting. Using the pressure washer and hand scrapers, the Knucklebusters (Feke, Kellie, Bryan, Tommy, Vanessa) with assistance from Justin got the house ready for paint in the next few days. We need to caulk some edges before we begin, so that job will have to be first on the agenda tomorrow. We fear that we might face rain over the weekend, so it is important for us to time things carefully if we want to do a good job painting Sarah’s house.

As we walked back and forth between Don’s house and Sarah’s, we kept passing the trailer occupied by our great friend Rosie and her roommate Janet. Everyone who passed by when Rosie was outside got a big hug from her and many of the passersby came back with treats from Rosie for all of us (including fruit, cookies, and little after dinner mints!). We got a quick historical overview of the street from Rosie, in which we learned about her family’s commitment there since 1917. As structural workers pulled out yet another dumpster-full of lumber and flooring from Rosie’s gutted house, she kept staring into the pile and exclaiming over the fact that those nails right in front of us had been driven by her father and her grandfather almost 100 years ago. She also told us about “barge boards” that were used in the construction of many of the homes along the block, including hers. As it turns out, barges would make their way down the Mississippi, but their operators had no reliable way to make it back upriver with such large boats; thus, they dismantled the barges and New Orleanians took the planks by horse and carriage into the neighborhoods to build their homes in the early 20th century. The barge boards served as the only walls of the houses (Rosie’s house was still without insulation, though it had been sheet-rocked inside, at the time of the storm).

Back at Don’s house we were moving quickly to smooth the walls that had been damaged so that we can move toward texturing them tomorrow to match the undamaged parts that remain. Further, we took on the job of installing a new door so that Don’s house can be locked securely for the first time since August 29th, 2005 (the day that Katrina hit). Justin, Feke, Shane, Jed, Aaron, and Matt all joined forces to make sure that the door would be lockable before we left the neighborhood. Though hanging a door is a difficult job no matter what, this job was harder than most because the house had taken on a noticeable tilt that probably preceded the storm. The old door had tilted with the house, but no new door was ever going to match that slant. It took several hours, but our guys miraculously walked away at the end of the job by locking that door and handing Don the key. He was thrilled.

We’ll continue working at Don’s and Sarah’s houses tomorrow and we’ll also check in with Parkway Partners about some work that we hope to do in one of their community garden lots. More to come. . .


It was good to see another friendly, familiar face. The group was working on a house in the ninth ward when Rosie found her way outside. It was weird being back in the same neighborhoods that were once deserted and destroyed, but once Rosie came by everything seemed to be all right again.


Linzy and Emily representing Mannschaft, winning best patch work for the day. Way to bring home the gold.


Welcome back Elijah! Literally today, Elijah flew in around 12am. Since last year Elijah has graduated from SMC and began going to film school in Burbank, California. Here, in this picture he is enjoying the lunch his group made while he was sleeping an extra hour. Although he did not help with Lunch we are very happy to have him here and his assistance and expertise on film and video.


Linzy and Janeva gleefully repair the assaulted wall.


Thank you Mrs. Verrips for the delicious cookies!


After a long day, everyone packed onto the bus and we headed home.


We be grubbin’. Quinoa, sundried-tomatoes, and canned ham or tofu… Our favorite! On a special note, fellow relief workers from another organization dropped off two pizzas which we fought over like a pack of lions.


After working so hard during the afternoon we all got together to have a great lunch! Provided to us by the ONEders, the tasty treat was well appreciated by all.


Kellie and Emily work hard to remove excess paint chips on Sarah's house. The pressure washer didn’t quite get all the chips, but it sure did clean the house well!


Team Knucklebuster’s take a quick break at Sarah Mercadel’s home, while Feke shares a funny experience about last years Jan term.



Bryan and Soraya happily rocked their new “tool time” gear: gloves, hard hats, and protective eyewear.


The crew does their best to scrape off the old paint from Sarah Mercadel’s house.


Feke, Emily, Vanessa, prep the house for paint work.


Rachel reflects on the activities of the day, while Bree enjoys the fruit given to us by our beloved friend Rose.


Tommy, Juan, and Elijah get down and dirty pulling up tile from Don Edwards’ crib.


Here, is a time to rest and socialize. The group is resting on the porch of Rosie’s houses. The lunch prepared consisted of whole grain pasta, accompanied with sun-dried tomatoes, oil-vinaigrette, and a choice between pork and tofu. For a side dish there was applesauce, cliff bars, and of course the most popular and most consumed Ritz crackers. There was a lot left over.


Songs of the Day:
"Feels Like Home" by Bonnie Raitt
"Tougher Than the Rest" by Bruce Springsteen
"Shine" by Cyndi Lauper
"Wash Me Clean" by K.D. Lang