For the past ten years, it was a dream to build a home in Destrehan where I grew up. It was a place where I had so many experiences. It was a place that I had a contentious relationship with at times but it was still home and I could not think of any other place to spend the rest of my life. In 2018, after saving money and preparing for this endeavor, the decision was made to make this dream a reality.

I had always envisioned building a home where I could be creative and share more personal parts of my life with friends and family. My mother passed away in 2007 and I had collected a number of her paintings so it was fitting to build a place to showcase her work. I had also had a massive collection of my own work that needed a home as well. The design vision of the home included a gallery of my mother's work as well as mine.

When designing the home, great thought went into creating spaces and tall walls to showcase the work that I had been collecting for many years. It was also a place where entertaining friends and family could take place for different occasions. Careful consideration was taken when we designed the floor plans, electrical circuits, irrigation layouts, porch positioning behind the house, accent lighting, smart features, and of course the location of the studio. Once all the debating and arduous design discussion were complete, we provided the concept design drawings to an architect to produce final issue for construction drawings.

When we finally broke ground for construction, it was thrilling feeling to see something that was created on paper spring to life. The interaction with different contractors and watching the interest of new neighbors to what was being created was really rewarding. I had purchased homes before but being complimented on something that we had worked so hard to design was really special.

We worked with my father who operated as the general contractor coordinating the day in and day out construction. I decided that in order to save money, I would perform some of the construction myself like painting the interior of the whole house, installing the flooring on the second floor, as well as the floor and railing of the studio balcony. We experienced poor performance of our plumbing contractors and it was decided that I would also complete the finish plumbing work since I had a piping background.

After all of the grinding to get through all of the construction phase and dealing with escalating construction prices during the pandemic, we were finally ready to move in. It was something so humbling and rewarding the day we started moving our personal belongings into the home. Once the paintings were starting to be hung on the walls, it was then that I realized that one of my major dreams had been achieved. All of the hard work over the years or working long hours and making great sacrifices had awarded us our dream.

This is just the beginning. There is much more to do as we begin to create the ideal home. We have been blessed with good health and rewarding careers that have provided us this canvas to paint on. Welcome to our home.