Fixing The Problem

As it would turn out, the famous New Orleans drummer, John Vidacovich, has a very screwed up house. After consulting with my mentor, Paul Sanderson, I think that the front beam is unrepairable as far as what johnny and Deborah are willing to pay. We can replace the side beam but will have to build a temporary wall in order to do it. I still don't know exactly how I am going to approach this.

The Counter Offer.

Paul called me and said that it was going to be after thanksgiving before he could get over to Deborah and Johnny's house. I returned to work the Friday after Thanksgiving to continue replacing siding. Johnny came out of the house with two cups of coffee and said that he would like to speak to me. We sat down and he told me that he couldn't afford to pay $10,000 if that is what it would cost to fix his house. He asked me if there were some way that I could put a temporary fix on things that would be less expensive. I told him that I would think about it but that I didn't want to be held liable for anything. I wanted to talk to Paul and get him to look at it before I gave any solutions.

Explaining the Ultimate Tragedy

I knew at this point that there was nothing left to do but fold. I had to explain to the Vidacovich's that this was out of my hands. In order to fix this problem it was going to take a lot more men and way heavier equipment than I was used to dealing with including house jacks and cement trucks. They actually took the news quite calmly but with a look of sheer terror stricken across their faces. The first question that they asked was how much it was going to cost to repair. I didn't know what to tell them. It could cost anywhere from $2,000 to $10,ooo. This concerned them. I called my prior boss and long time friend Paul Sanderson, whom owns a company called Sanderson Services. I described the problem to him and he said that he would come by and take a look at it.

The Ultimate Tragedy

As opposed to starting next on the front of the house, we crossed over to the other side. The electrical meters and cable box were attached to the side that we were redoing next. I called Entergy and Cox cable and requested that they come and remove the boxes from the outside of the house and we moved on to another section of hardy that we needed to replace. After all boxes had been removed we started pulling off the old siding that was underneath them. After we had removed it all I discovered the most tragic of a series of unfortunate events. The front corner of the house, where the floor joices met up was completely eaten out by termites. The house is raised so the front corner rests on cinder block pillars. The termites had eaten to the corner, all of the way to the edges of the pillars. It was inevitable that if the floor joices were not replaced with a sense of urgency, that the front corner of the house would surely cave in. This was going to be expensive.

A Couple of Good Days

We worked for several days priming and residing the back and one side of the house. It was quite remarkable because nothing really bad happened. I will note that when we got to the very front of the house we discovered where there had been some minimal termite damage on the front corner. The Vidacovich's told me that they had a termite problem several years prior to Hurricane Katrina and had treated the problem. This kind of thing happens all of the time. If the damage is not substantial enough to affect the structure of the home than it doesn't really matter.

BUY LOCAL

Since the creation of Falcon Renovations we have always tried as hard as we could to buy all of our building materials from local distributors. Sometimes it is hard to not go to Home Depot.
For lumber we always buy from Liberty Lumber which is located on Magazine. Their service is impeccable and they deliver the lumber. Not all lumber yards will deliver. Anyway, we had a bunch of hardy plank delivered to the Vidacovich's home. The boards were cracked and full of knot holes. We made full use of everything as best as we could but ended up throwing a substantial amount of wood away. Liberty has a no return policy on wood. I don't know if they should be held accountable. Could have been that it was a badly milled batch of wood. This house is turning into a money pit.

Upon Disaster

The first thing that we did the next day was place an order for quadruple the amount of wood that we had originally ordered. Upon arrival of the wood we unloaded the truck only to find out that our problems had not ended. After laying all of the wood out for priming, we discovered that a lot of the wood was badly damaged. Disaster upon disaster.

Disaster

When we went to pull off the hardi board that were damaged we discovered a whole new nightmare. The insulation was rotten and decayed. When confronting Deborah Vidacovich about the problem my tensions were high. I was worried because I new that this could mean way more money than these people had planned on spending. She actually took the blow well. I told her that in order to correct the problem we would have to pull off all of the hardi board, a side at a time and replace it with new insulation and plank.

starting the job

When Falcon Renovations started work on John Vidacovich's we began with sanding the exterior hardy boards. It became evident at the very beginning that we were going to have to replace some of the hardy board that were rotten and cracked. My assistant took a count of how many were damaged and we placed an order with Liberty Lumber, located on Magazine St., in Uptown New Orleans. This marked the beginning of a number of expenses that were to pop up through out the job culminating in the ultimate structural damage.

John Vidacovich's house

Falcon Renovations was hired to refinish the exterior of the home of famous New Orleans jazz drummer, John Vidacovich. Johnny Vidacovich currently plays drums in the jazz quartet Astral Project. He also hosts a trio with George Porter Jr. at the Maple Leaf bar every Thursday.
We were hired to sand down the exterior of the house and then paint it. Deborah, Johnny's wife, also wanted us to build her a deck in the back yard and refinish her wood floors.
At first glance the job seemed routine. It seemed as though the house was in decent shape structurally, which gave me confidence that the job would move smoothly. I told Deborah that it would take us about 3 weeks to get the exterior of the house done.