Rebuilding Alex's House

Hey Ya'll, Traci here again...

It is mid-October and I find myself in the midst of something great at my work; I am in the process of helping to rebuild a home from start to finish! I am working on the lovely corner of Lizardi and Royal Street in the Lower Ninth Ward helping to rebuild Mr. Hubbard’s home that was flooded during Katrina. When I arrived here, I was assigned to this house and so I could start in on documenting my work as I am creating a formalized training program for rebuilding homes for lowernine.org.

At first I was a little tentative to stick to one house for more than a month; I enjoy variety, and commitment scares me, haha. But, after working at this 100 year old house, and helping to lead my own crews, it has become “mine”. I feel such ownership for this house, I want to take care of it, rebuild it to the best of my ability and infuse it with tons of love!

I think something that has made working on Alex’s house even more enjoyable is the fact that I have a great co-worker named Tim. Tim has previous construction experience, so he is the project manager on this site and I have been recently dubbed “his lil partner” by Darren and others. Day in and out we have worked together; sometimes we work with 7 other people hanging drywall, other days it has just been Tim and I sawing pieces of siding and talking about our lives as we wait for our supervisor to pick us up at the end of the day. I find it so powerful to have gotten to know a co-worker so much, so fast, and that we both feel very dedicated to “our house”. Whenever new workers come with us, we divvy up the tasks and both lead our small groups. This has been great since on the days that it is just me and Tim he teaches me certain things, and then I get to demonstrate what I learned to others when necessary.

Overall at Alex’s house I have learned how to install insulation, cut and hang drywall, do residing, and fire proof and weatherize a home. Once the drywall is hung totally, we will help to tape and mud the joints and then hopefully get to do some flooring and painting!

To give you a clearer understanding of what I have been doing, check out the video Tim and I made at “our house”. It was filmed prior to hanging the sheetrock. This link will take you directly to the video, while you are there check out my other videos of NOLA!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNToA9i51FU