HOME AGAIN! The Landry Family Home
New Orleans homeowners use National Trust assistance to recover from Gulf Coast hurricanes
Bari and her son Scott pose on the porch of their home seven weeks after the levee breach.
For days after Hurricane Katrina, Bari Landry fidgeted in Houston. She watched CNN, swapped rumors with other New Orleans evacuees and believed the worst for her historic South Lakeview neighborhood.
Then she started to get e-mails from friends trickling back into New Orleans, and their reports, while horrific, were defiantly optimistic. Satellite images and blog photos showed that six feet of water from the 17th Street Canal breach had flooded the blocks of early 20th century bungalows and raised basement houses in Bari’s National Register neighborhood. However, because her home was built on brick piers like most of the historic city, the water line was below the window sills.
“When I saw these images, I stopped listening to the disaster mongers and went for professional advice,” says Bari.
The National Trust sent volunteer teams of architects, engineers and mold specialists to Bari Landry’s 1923 Arts-and-Crafts-style bungalow.
She visited the National Trust for Historic Preservation web site, which had posted a guide for treating flood damaged older homes. She studied the step-by-step plan to remove the ruined contents, dry out the house through natural ventilation, disinfect and treat plaster walls and saturated wood, conserve the historic materials and prevent further deterioration. When South Lakeview residents got clearance to re-enter their neighborhood, Bari was braced for the damage and prepared to take action.
“Based on advice from the Trust and the Preservation Resource Center of New Orleans, I had decided that if I walked into my bungalow and it was structurally intact and the floors weren’t buckled, then I was going to save the house,” she says.
On October 5, garbed in protective clothing, goggles, a mask and leather gloves, Bari stepped over the threshold of the 1500 square foot home that she shares with her sons, Scott and Michael.
“It was like the furniture, toys, pictures, cabinets, appliances—everything—had spun in a blender. Nothing was where we had left it,” she says. “Mold covered the walls and everything we owned that had been under water. But the roof was mostly intact, the plaster appeared solid, the ceiling hadn’t caved in, every floor board was in place, and the walls seemed fine structurally. I still had a house!”
After removing the warped kitchen cabinets and flood-damaged appliances, a demolition crew tore out the mold-laden Sheetrock.
With the National Trust remediation plans in hand, Bari and friends got to work cleaning exterior debris and then throwing out almost everything in the house that could be holding moisture and contributing to further damage. When they finished, a stack of memories eight feet tall spanned the front of her property for relief workers to haul away.
Still, Bari refused to mourn the saturated stuffed animals and disintegrated photo albums. “I had to steel myself that anything I could salvage would be a bonus,” she says.
With the mud and the ruined Sheetrock, insulation, floor coverings and contents out of the way, the front of the roof patched with a tarp, the walls washed with a solution of bleach and water, and all the windows and doors left open for two weeks, Bari was finally able to visualize her home’s potential.
“Don’t make any decisions until your house is dry. Only then can you really see your way back,” she advises other homeowners. “Gather all the information you can before deciding to tear down, renovate, move or sell.”
“It’s going to be ugly,” Bari Landry warns returning homeowners, “but don’t make any decisions until your house is dry. Gather all the information you can before deciding to tear down, renovate, move or sell.”
An excellent source of advice is the National Trust, which has organized teams of volunteer specialists from across the country to assess the damage and remediation of New Orleans’ historic architecture. The Trust has also established a field office with the Preservation Resource Center. Shortly after Bari began clearing debris, a team visited her home. While many remediation companies descending on the flooded city recommend taking everything down to the studs, the team’s mold specialist and architects inspected the plaster on wood lathing and determined the walls were sturdy. They also confirmed that the cypress floors were in good condition. This advice has saved Bari time and money and helped retain the historic features of her 1923 home. In fact, the historic building materials survived where the “modernized” vinyl siding, flooring and drywall did not.
“The vinyl siding was partly torn away by the wind and stained by the flood waters,” she says. “The original wood siding underneath appears undamaged, so I am going to remove the vinyl and restore the wood. I’m also refinishing the original cypress floorboards that were hidden under newer flooring.”
“When I started very few neighbors had returned,” Bari says. “Now almost everyone in the area has started working on their houses, and people stop by my home to see the progress. It’s beginning to look quite good considering what it’s been through.”
Author: Mary Fitzpatrick Photos: Cheryl Gerber