My wife and I are Katrina evacuees and currently living in Baton Rouge La. I’m a plumber and I have been doing all phases of construction & property maint. with my wife doing office work and a customer service rep. I have been self employed in construction with my wife’s help for over 20 years til Katrina wiped us out with our home & office in Lakeview. I have worked all over the N.O. area for yaers. We want to help rebuild of our native city. WE WANT TO COME HOME! We are looking for someone who has real estate resedinces or rental property who would trade a living quaters where we could live in trade for work on thier property. We can discuss the details. We really want to come home to N.O. and want to help rebuild our city. We have tools transportation computers faxprinter over 20 years of plumbing & many other phases of const. exp. in new and existing const.. If you or someone you know could use some help in this situation. Please reply. We’ll all benifitt. THANKS Peter & Donna

My husband and I both love HOUSES. We’ve both done construction;I’ve been a superintendent twice for two major residential construction builders in my area, we have tools, I LOVE LOVE LOVE doing Interior Design (I’m quite confident in my talents), my husband LOVES redoing and making house plans (he plans to be an architect), we love business, we build our own furniture, and we love old/abused homes to remodel, fix up, and sell!! How and where and what do we do to get into this??

I find papered over windows in new or renovating shops to be ugly (although more and more they are used for lease signs or to announce the realtor/developer). Someone told me they paper over the windows to hide the fact that they leave tools on site. Is this true or is there some other reason? And why just brown paper?

My husband and I are working with a builder of a subdivision we are planning on building in. We chose a home from the options this builder has for the sub. To get started on the house, we need to give him $5,000 down. However we do not have the funds saved so we are able to do a construction loan. I’ve heard so many things about construction loans and how the fees are horrible. Yet, its been so hard for me to find any information. Would the fees be that steep, even though we only need $5000 down? Is there any specific banks/companies out there that make this process easier that anyone would recommend? Any help or information would be greatly appreciated. Thank You!