Exit to Mystery Street

It's been a long time since I posted something here.  I would have written more often, but I have been busy installing solar panels, finishing the house, and having the greatest Jazzfest ever.  So, although my original deadline of last year's Jazzfest came and went, I met this year's Jazzfest deadline.  And was it a wonderful one at that.  This is my father, surveying his realm on a morning during the first weekend of Jazzfest.

In the last few months, we got the entire house fully inspected, got the solar electric system turned on, finished some last finishing touches, and today, got the solar electric monitoring up and running.  It can be viewed here:

Solar Electric Monitoring

In the last few months, I've been a part of installing the largest solar electric systems in Louisiana.  It has kept me very busy, and in that time, I've also branched into attempting to teach solar installation at my alma mater, Yestermorrow.  The first go-around was purportedly successful, and hopefully, I can make teaching a regular part of my schedule, in addition to installation.

As for some of the finishing touches to the house, we joined and installed the bamboo island countertop, sealed the Paperstone countertops in the kitchen, and installed a stained glass window in the front second story room, dubbed the "Tree of Life."  The stairway is also looking splendid, as some last pieces of wood were installed to finish it out.

For a house warming party for myself and friends, I held a derby-inspired party, complete with fancy hats, suits, and mint-juleps.  Although the night horse racing atmosphere was tempting, I'm not much on gambling, so I didn't place any bets on the ponies.

    

As for Jazzfest, when these holidays came around, I was going to have a full plate of guests, family, friends, and revelry.  The first weekend, my parents, sisters, and aunt, arrived.  Additionally, a filmmaker friend of mine from back in Illinois, and his girlfriend, stopped by.  Together, we navigated the weekend, culminating with a rousing performance by the Boss:

Death to My Hometown--Bruce Springsteen, Jazzfest 2012

This song was particularly poignant to my friend, my sisters (pictured above dodging some of the sun and heat with their wonderful plastic bags filled with water hats--patent pending), and me.  It carries a strong Irish-American melody, while detailing the sad state of small American towns, like ours.  While our celebration in New Orleans was happening, we were also receiving news about the state of our hometown in Illinois.  Businesses are closing, places we'd known as children are being bulldozed, our hometown is dying--just like in the song.  As I culminate this process, strong feelings of returning home to help and rebuild, ones which I had when I returned to New Orleans after Katrina, come to mind and heart.  I might have to act on those...

The next weekend, chaos and joy reigned.  Not only was this house filled to the brim with family and friends, but my tiny shotgun next door was due to be inhabited by 4 people.  These 4 brave souls, Solomon, Jerry, Jessica, and Claire, were Jazzfest newbies hailing from the Washington, D.C. area, and hopefully I was able to show them a good taste of New Orleans.  Like a lot of my plans (or lack thereof), I held out that it would work, with the aplomb exhibited by Geoffrey Rush in Shakespeare in Love:  "I don't know, it's a mystery!"  In addition to the guests, I also had to conduct a crawfish boil in tandem with a party with our neighbors.  This sounds wonderful in concept, yet terrifying if you have never actually done the cooking---which was my situation.  In the days leading up to the boil, I enlisted the expertise and equipment of neighbors and friends.  They assured me that it would be fine---I received a boiling pot from the owners of Finn McCool's, two recipes from Cajun friends, and the help of architect (another architect!) and cajun friend, Tim Dumatrait.  While I started the boil and was able to get everything set up logistically, it was only when Tim showed up on the scene when the boil became a masterpiece of cajun country cooking.  We started washing and purging the crawfish in kiddie pools around 5 o'clock in the afternoon, and starting boiling at 6. There was a worry that we would run out of propane for the burner, so I jumped into my truck to go purchase another tank.  I returned as the Festival was closing for the day, when thousands of people were exiting my neighborhood on foot, making navigation almost impossible.  With hazard lights, a careful foot on the brake, and saying "Sorry, excuse me, I live here, sorry..."  I waded the truck through the sea of people back to the house.  The crawfish started coming out in small batches around 8, and didn't stop until midnight.

Through the chaos and eating, we made lots of friends, received high compliments from guests, and as the night ended, even had several sing-a-longs with neighbors.  Our rendition of "You've Lost that Lovin' Feelin'" was a crowd favorite, but some of our neighbors might have been a little perturbed at our soulful serenading.  Oh well, it's Jazzfest, you gotta sing and dance!

The remaining days of Jazzfest were filled with people watching, wonderful food, great times with family and friends, evening strolls, music in the streets, dancing, imbibing, and watching the sun come up.  In 10 years of living in New Orleans and going to Jazzfest, it was by far the greatest I have ever experienced.  For now, Fetehaus is finished, and though our adventures will undoubtedly continue, the story of building this home is complete.  Maybe I will revisit this with updates or new directions in building other things, but for now, as every Jazzfest ends, you must take that literal and existential command that is posted at the edge of the Fairgrounds, and "Exit to Mystery Street."

To all those who have read this blog and watched our progress, thank you dearly and I hope it has been fun and entertaining.  I lived a dream over the last year and a half, full of ups and downs, but the result is also that with this home, and the people who have helped it become reality, our dreams came true.  From the bottom of my full heart, thank you.

Home For The Holidays

Well, we made it into the house for the holidays...but just barely. In the whirlwind last days before Christmas, we were able to get the house's final inspection, Certificate of Occupancy, and gas turned on. I also installed 400 kW of solar systems in New Orleans in the last month and a half, and that's mostly the reason I haven't found the time to write! The one thing we lack is electricity from the utility, which they were unable to furnish before Christmas. Some might ask why the solar could not provide our juice---it's a grid-interactive system without batteries, so it offsets the electric bill when the grid is running, rather than store it for usage later. So for Christmas we got the best cabin in the city.

The electric will be hooked up this week, just before the New Year. There is still some baseboard to put in, some finishes to apply, some stories to tell; but it's a home now, a home for the holidays.

Happy Holidays from my family to yours!

Pictures of You

In retrospect, I should've done a time lapse of the changes the house has experienced, and with all the pictures I've taken, that can probably still happen, but that would be a project in and of itself.

The work that has taken place lately has been very tedious---planing old pieces of wood, touching up paint, hanging doors, making doors out of found material, calling in favors from people who have better tools than I do.

They say a picture speaks a thousand words. So, I give you something close to a novel:

Come Together

Things are starting to come together... It's taken a considerable amount of time to do this, because some of the materials that we are using (i.e. recycled and repurposed stuff) take a long time to prepare. Remember all the way back when I was talking about flooring for the upstairs? Preparing the material for that has taken forever, pictures below of what it looks like.

Finishing a house is always tedious and time-consuming, and now that my grad program has started back up, my mind and body are running on...Well, what am I running on?

--Coffee

--Water

--Juice

--WWOZ (New Orleans radio station)

--Little sleep

--Food

--The hope that things will turn out awesome.

That last one is tough to grasp right now, a lot of things are happening in the world and in life that tend to get us down. Quote from a song from my jam-band obsession days:

"Gonna pick myself up off the ground, that old feeling comes around again

I've had enough of feeling down, something I lost that must be found again

Sometimes seems like such a hard life, but there's good times around the bend

Roller coaster's got to roll to the bottom if you want to climb to the top again."

Yes, that was the String Cheese Incident. Yes, I just did that, what of it?

Anyway, the walls and exterior have a good coat of paint, the cabinets have been mounted, the old windows have been repaired, the floors have been put down, the A/C unit (HUGE) has been set...Crap, it's been awhile since I wrote one of these updates...

So, instead of making this post huge and unending, I'll get to the sexy flooring part and explain the minutiae of the A/C, windows, and cabinets later.

What I am proud to say is that, save for the bathrooms, all of the flooring for the house was salvaged from wood original to the house. The downstairs looks like this now (Unsanded and unfinished just yet):

And for the upstairs, we took the old cypress and pine siding from the exterior, planed and milled it, and made it into flooring slats:

Before:

After:

And the upstairs hallway:

As I said, a lot more has been happening with other aspects of the house, it's just been a long process to get this one part to come together.

More to come...

With a Little Help from My Friends

While the drywall was going in, I had Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall" playing over and over in my head. Something about the walls going up pushed that song to fore.

Hanging was very quick, taking roughly 2-3 days. Also, one of the more entertaining parts of the building took place--stilt walking. For high ceilings, drywall finishers don stilts to do some of the finish work, and in the process, look very whimsical and precarious. That's what this guy was doing in the pictures above. In my haste, I had contracted with this crew with the idea of finishing and priming the walls quickly in the hopes of providing a nice shelter for my parents to stay in/inspect on the 4th of July Weekend. Because of that haste, I forgot about a couple essential amenities:

--Bathroom fans

--Dryer exhaust

Oops. And big "Oops" at that. So with that, I had to go back and take down some pieces of drywall and install these fixtures. I would have been lost and frustrated, but I had "A Little Help from My Friends."

For one, I had my oldest (in length of time that I've known him) friend, Patrick, helping me out. That picture is of Patrick crafting a balloon animal at a bar. Don't ask me why, but there was a pile of balloons with instructions on how to make balloon animals at a bar where we went to see one of my friends play some music. If Patrick doesn't want to stay in construction, he might have a future as a clown.

I've known Patrick since I was a baby, our parents were friends when we were born, so we started to hang out and play G.I. Joes and Ninja Turtles together as kids. We lost touch for awhile in high school and college, but last summer, we reconnected to renovate the house in which I grew up in Illinois. That project still has some finishing touches to be completed, but Patrick was instrumental in advancing and leading that renovation.

Since I needed all the help I could get, I naturally turned to him again to help with this house. Needless to say, he has been instrumental and awesome again. His knowledge of energy efficiency/weatherization, construction, and attention to detail has been a godsend to my scatter-brained approach to building this house. At times, I've been fatigued and stressed, not knowing what to do next--but Patrick has provided the much needed push to keep the project on track.

On one night in particular, I came back to the house after going to a coffee shop to unwind. It was close to midnight, and there was a worklight on in the house. I walked in to find Patrick priming the walls and ceiling with a giant paint roller.

Me: "Dude, what are you doing?"

Patrick: "Painting, what's it look like?"

Me: "It's almost midnight--"

Patrick: "Well, it's better than painting in the middle of the afternoon."

He had a point. I grabbed a roller and started priming. We finished up around 1:30am and I was thankful that Patrick was so dedicated. He gave me the swift kick to the ass that I needed.

In the time that Patrick has been here, Colin had to return to real life back West for awhile and attend a wedding. However, with those pilgrimages completed, he has come back for a few weeks to further accelerate some of the building and finishing.

Wait, I've seen this movie before...This is totally that scene from "Desperado" when El Mariachi's friends come back to town to help him defeat the evil crime baron. I'm trying to figure out who has the rocket launcher guitar case and who has the machine gun guitar case, but I guess that makes me Antonio Banderas. That's not vanity, it's just a logical analogy, I swear.

Here Comes the Sun

This is my favorite part of building the house. I have done solar installation for the last two and a half years, and I'm probably going to make a career in renewable energy. To me, it seems like something which can be embraced by all walks of life. Especially with the harnessing of the sun as a direct energy source, it evokes something which is universal and essential. Indeed, I have embraced such existential delusions of grandeur that I made a Latin phrase from the Satyricon the motto of my company: "Sol Omnibus Lucet"--"The Sun Shines Upon Us All." Yep, I'm a pompous snob :).

So, on to the roof porn:

This is a 3.22 kW (nameplate value) system, comprised of 14 solar panels/modules, each with their own micro-inverter. The micro-inverters are the shiny silver boxes pictured above. More commonplace systems use a single, centralized inverter, but this newer technology makes each panel its own mini-system. In this the way, the system is highly modular, more efficient, safer, and uses fewer components. Additionally, monitoring for the system's performance can be easily monitored both from the system's display or through a wi-fi connection and computer. My parents or I could monitor the system's daily performance via computer, which is pretty neat.

Although we did not do solar water heating on the house, I planned for enough roof space to incorporate solar hot water in the future. One day, this house might run completely off of solar energy, but for now, it is going to have net zero electrical bills.

Foam

It had now come time to insulate the house, and due to the small wall cavities of the place, I chose to insulate the entire house in spray-foam insulation. Any other insulation material would not provide an R-value which would be desired to effectively meet code and the energy efficiency requirements we wanted to hit. This, in combination with the reflective housewrap, should provide an R-25 in the walls, and about an R-40 roof. The R-value is a measure of thermal transfer resistance, and the higher the number, the better for the energy efficiency of the building.

Spray foam is known for its ability to effectively seal air gaps, as well as provide superior insulation against the elements. As with many products, there is a debate as to the environmental footprint and health effects of such a product. However, these products have been widely tested and utilized. To mitigate any potential offgasing of any chemicals, we will rely on the introduction of fresh air from the high efficiency A/C system and the inclusion of houseplants which are highly effective air cleaners. A list of plants which are wonderful for improving indoor air quality are listed here:

Air-Filtering Plants

We decided to do closed-cell throughout the house, as it would provide an effective moisture barrier from the elements. The floor was sprayed first, the roof second, and the walls last. After a few days, some of the wall insulation started peeling away from the wall studs and shrinking, indicating that the wall batch might have been mixed improperly. The contractor was gracious enough to come back in, tear out the bad parts, and respray the foam in the parts where it was peeling away. After the second spray, it held up and we were ready to close in the walls. However, before the drywall, we decided to start on one of my favorite parts of the house: Solar!