On day five of our New Orleans excursion (day three of our de-molding project) we are beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel in terms of winning the war against the spores.  A noble cause it is.  I’m sure some other bloggers have covered this, but I feel that one more time going over the de-molding process can only serve to enlighten, right?  We begin by “gutting” a house– taking out all of the sheetrock, light fixtures, wires, floorboards, nails– and then move on to “molding”, which involves going over every stud (2×4) in the house with a wire brush, vaccuming up the resultant mold-dust, and then wiping down the boards with a pinesol solution.  As of today, the de-molders (aka Team Awesome) are about halfway done with the Pinesolification of the house.

Yesterday I was working in the attic with the owner of the house we are working on, an older gentleman named Tony, going through items that had to be thrown away due to water damage.  We must have thrown out at least a thousand dollars worth of power tools, fishing rods, Holiday decorations, extension cords, lawn furniture– anything that would be in an attic.  While these aren’t exactly necessities, and indeed it would be pretty easy to get by without them, it was humbling to see this man forced to totally disassociate himself from his objects.  Tony makes his own furniture, and really valued his power tools.  He’s a fisherman, too.  He’s had to radically change his life after the hurricanes; he’s been forced to find satisfaction in new mediums; in relationships, in community building.  He says Katrina was a transformative experience for him.  So there’s an upside.