Roof Work on Church Has Begun

I hired Durable Slate out of New Orleans to renovate my roof.  More than anything I wanted to save the integrity of the interior and this is no small job.  The renvation of the roof is expensive and I still will probably have the roof replaced at some point.  The clay top ridge needed to be re-set due to Issac and Katrina.  Something of note, the large clay ridge caps only sit up on the roof and piggy back each other.  They do not nail or cement in place but because of their heavy weight they will stay.
Anyway, the roofers show up the first day.

When I expect a crew of people over with boom lifts and ladders only 2 guys show up.  2 guys, 2 ladders, no power tools no ropes, just 2 ladders.  When Josh goes up the first time he says "the ladder is too short we have to go back to the shop; we will start tomorrow".  I thought, this will take a long time for sure at this rate. 

So, when a roofer goes up for repairs he brings with him a few tools, nails and hooks.  This is it!  He takes his time pulling apart the old damaged tile and slowly replaces each tile with copper nails and stainless hooks while his assistant cuts each one to size on the ground and then runs up the ladder to give him the finished tile.  Suprizingly they move right along replacing 50+ tiles in the first day. 

By day 2 they have done over 100 tiles and replaced the clay roof caps.  By day 4 and 5 they have done all the tile and all the ridge caps.  It was amazing to see and I was glad I did not tackle this myself.  (I watched a youtube video of it and thought I could do this myself, till I went to the roof edge).  Caulking up a few more spots and we are good to go.

Time Goes By Quickly

While I was working on selling my studio and home in Shreveport I was doing the usual planning and re-planning of my 2 spaces at 2009 and 2001 Iberville.  I have to finish the 2009 in order to get to the church renovation so it has been taking some time.  I did finally sell my property in Shreveport and now I have the time to concentrate on everything NOLA.  I am in the process of getting temporary electricity and started on a new roof for the 2009 property.

Due to damage in Issac I am now spending thousands of dollars on re-vamping my church roof as well.  A added expense I did not plan on right now.  Unfortunately I only bought the property weeks before Issac and my insurance policy did not even arrive, so I did not think it would be right to try to make a claim on the first payment.   The new works will start the first week of April.  I tried to find old clay ridge caps like the church already has but to no avail.  I will have to put regular clay ridge caps on in place of some of the real ornate original ones since they were blown away in Katrina and Issac.

New walls will be going in 2009 in the near future as well as a new sub floor.  The metal roof will be better for Hurricane's and new additions to structure will make it Hurricane proof.  More pictures will be coming soon.