Like the rest of the world, I like to play a game

[conuly]

called "What if I had several hundred millions of dollars in disposable cash?"

And I know what I'd do, too, after the donations to charity, and the careful putting aside some money into spendthrift trusts for my entire family, and the buying of a heck of a lot of books, and the paying off of the mortgage. After all that, I'd raise the roof. Lift it a few feet so this third floor had more usable space, and then put a ceiling on it to effectively make a small fourth floor attic for storage. (The roof has a high pitch and really, we could do that part right now if we had the cash.)

My mother has a story she likes to tell, from back when she was driving cab in New Orleans now and again. Apparently, she once got talking with two riders who turned out to be architects from Italy. And she asked them "Have you seen how they add floors to their homes here?"

Apparently, while the rest of the world raises the roof if they want to add a new floor to their home, in Louisiana they jack up the entire house and put the new floor underneath. There are, I'm told, many homes with the water heaters in the attic because when they were installed, that was the ground floor!

So she drove them around town, pointing out several examples of this phenomenon right in her own neighborhood, and got a pretty good tip out of it.

Comments

[steorra]

The house where I lived in my teens, and which my parents just sold, was originally built in one city (we're not sure just when, but probably some time before World War 2). It was later barged up to a different community some miles up the coast, where it was placed atop a new lower storey.

[conuly]

That's pretty cool. And if you're moving the house anyway, it makes a lot of sense to do it that way.

[alatefeline]

:D

[cereta]

I play that game a lot. I always think that, after the sensible things like paying off all my debt and setting aside money for the small fanperson's education, I would pay an architect to design a near-exact replica of my mother's childhood home (it was built for her grandparents when they married, and it never stops breaking my heart that I will never step foot in it again). I would add some extras, like a modernized kitchen and built-in bookshelves in several rooms, but basically, that's what I would do,

[conuly]

That's a good idea.