BY: KEITH BRANNON, PHOTOS - CHERYL GERBER

“If I had only known …”

Kevin and Bobbi Rogers in their home that’s being renovated.

Here’s the scenario: You’re back in your house after months of storm renovations. Everything is new from the walls to the furniture, and you absolutely love the way the renovations turned out.

Except …
Why didn’t someone tell you it was a bad idea not to wrap some of your water pipes with insulation before you closed the walls? Now when someone runs the water upstairs, it sounds like there’s a waterfall in your guest bedroom.
Yes, that’s a minor problem, but it’s a little nugget of wisdom that I wish I had known before I closed the walls at my house. And it’s an example of the many small lessons that Hurricane Katrina renovators learn from the long, arduous experience of rebuilding after major storm damage.

I thought it would be a good idea to check in with other reluctant renovators to find out their best lessons learned. Not surprisingly, they have some great advice that I wish I had known about when I started repairs more than two years ago.

Lesson 1: There is no such thing as a good deal or a favor. You either pay with money or your time and energy later.

This is a hard one to learn because the lowest bid on a project is always enticing.

Think twice, says Bobbi Rogers, who is renovating a flooded house in Mid-City. She is subcontracting all the work and one of her subs offered to do her a favor by replacing a rotten sill for free. “The job was a little more difficult than he thought,” she says.
Because he wasn’t getting paid, he cut corners and Rogers eventually ended up having to pay someone else to redo the work. A similar thing happened later when Rogers, who works for a nonprofit that helps residents rebuild flooded homes, got a good deal from an electrician to tear out damaged wiring. “When it came time to finishing the job, we were his last priority. It took a lot of extra time to get him to come finish the job,” Rogers says. “Anybody who says ‘I’ll give you a good deal,’ or ‘I’ll help you out,’ I say: ‘No. Give me a fair price for a good job.’”

Lesson 2: Don’t be afraid to check the work.
Alyson Elder renovated her home near Broadmoor. She hired a general contractor by the hour to go over the work of her electrician before closing the walls. He found 17 code violations, including a potential fire hazard, in a matter of minutes by simply walking through the house. Elder met with her electrician and invited the general contractor to attend to help her articulate her concerns about the wiring. At first, it didn’t go well. “The electrician walked out of the house and slammed the door,” she says.

He returned a few minutes later after cooling down; Elder left the room and let him and the independent contractor work out a schedule to address what needed to be corrected. The $220 she spent hiring a general contractor for a few hours saved her hundreds of dollars in costly repairs that would have been needed down the road had she closed her walls.

Lesson 3: The people you hire aren’t necessarily the ones who will do the work.
This happened to me a few times. I signed a contract with one group for framing and a completely different crew showed up to do the job. Before you sign a contract, ask who will be doing the work and how often the primary contractor will be onsite. This gives a clear path of accountability if things go wrong. “Hire a contractor that personally supervises his crew; not one that drives by once a day,” Rogers says.

Lesson 4: Use the Web.
“Google probably saved our lives more than once,” Alyson Elder says.

There are dozens of great do-it-yourself sites that walk you through a project step-by-step. Use Google queries like “installing a window” and you’ll find several resources. Among the best I found are: www.hammerzone.com,
www.doityourself.com, www.askthebuilder.com and www.thisoldhouse.com. The Preservation Resource Center has a list service (http://groups.yahoo.com/
group/preserveneworleans) where residents can share tips, resources and renovation advice. For me, it has been an incredibly valuable resource in finding historically appropriate materials.

Lesson 5: Guard your tools.
Flashlights, hammers, screwdrivers, crowbars and tape measures all walked out of my house at various points of the renovation. “Write your name on everything and put them away before your contractor shows up,” says Ben Perez, who renovated
his flooded home in River Ridge. “And don’t loan your contractors anything.”

Lesson 6: Everything takes longer than you think.
Renovation time is different than real time. Realize that when a subcontractor says something will take a week to finish, it easily could take two. (And sometimes it might take two weeks just to get on the crew’s schedule.) “Two hours work left translates to two days work left; don’t let anyone kid you,” Rogers says.

The last important piece of advice: Hang in there. Matthew McMullen, who spent the better part of a year repairing a Broadmoor house, says it’s important not to let yourself get discouraged by the slow pace.

“Never give up,” says McMullen who completed the work in November. “I thought it was never going to end! I felt like I was never going to finish.”