When Erick
Blaudeau and Bill Dailey and first saw the rambling house on Verna Court in the Faubourg St. John
neighborhood, the building evoked a strong response.
“For Erick,
it was ‘No, no, no,’ but I could see the potential,” Dailey said. “We owned
about three houses at the time and we sold all of them except for a condo that
Erick could stay in if the project went badly.”
It didn’t, of
course, and now almost 10 years later, their purple “dragon house” stands out
among its neighbors on the tiny side street between Esplanade Avenue and the Fairgrounds (a
stone’s throw from the New Orleans Jazz Fest’s Acura Stage). Painted a striking
eggplant color with coral and pea green accents, the Craftsman style house
displays atop its porch roof a copper dragon finial, the source of its name. A
spectacular garden of palms, ferns, cacti and bromeliads fronts the two story
house and complements the home’s vivid exterior.
“It’s a far
cry from what it looked liked back then,” Dailey said. “When we first saw it,
it was painted a muddy brown color all over. There was no landscaping at all
because the previous owner had cut down all of the oaks that had surrounded it.
Most of the Craftsman details were hidden by awful awnings.”
According to
Dailey, the inside was even worse. A ceiling threatened to collapse in the
stairwell, filthy pink shag carpet covered floors in some rooms, and holes had
allowed moisture – and varmints – inside.
“Erick is a
radiologist and he was working long hours at Charity, so to preserve his
sanity, he stayed at the condo downtown most of the time,” Dailey said. “Our
friend David Padgett agreed to lend a hand on the renovation and he and I got
to work.”
Out went the
carpet, uncovering gleaming wood floors. Dailey and Padgett also removed
acoustical tiles from the ceilings and used baby oil to rub down the home’s
magnificent millwork to moisturize it and bring out its luster. They pinned up
sagging ceilings, patched holes, removed the awnings and got the house ready
for the next phase: Painting, furnishing and landscaping.
“We spent
all day, every day here working,” Dailey said. “When I couldn’t work anymore,
I’d flop down on a mattress on the floor and go to sleep. There were times that
I was so tired I didn’t care what crawled over me in the middle of the night.”
The
brilliant hues on the home’s exterior hint at the vibrant palette to be found
inside. A stair accessed through a door on the front porch leads the way to the
upstairs quarters (the partners’ main living area) and signals what to expect
in the way of décor. Painted a vivid melon color, it features a hand painted
ceiling and an expansive array of art work on its walls: Antique prints of palm
trees, papier maché masks, vintage black and white photos, and small paintings
all mix comfortably with one another.
At the top
of the stairs is the living room, where works by artists including George Dureau
appear on walls and easels and where the furniture flaunts exotic upholstery.
Forget about isolating a single special piece of artwork on one wall; these
walls exhibit all manner of art and artifact side by side. Consider, for
example, that a painting by Fernando Botero, the well-known Colombian artist,
can be found on the wall of the laundry room.
“I just ran
out of walls,” Dailey explained.
A lime-hued
dining room follows, centered on a long narrow table with high-back, woven rush
chairs. The hearty brick dining room fireplace relates to the one in the living
room in grandeur and scale. Overhead, dark wood beams crisscross the rooms’
ceilings. A sitting area off the dining room used to be an open porch before
the previous owners closed it in and installed casement windows.
“We decided
to keep the enclosure because we liked the light from three sides,” said
Dailey. “But what we didn’t like were the casement windows, which were all one
piece of glass.” Dailey studied the home’s architecture, especially the
configuration of panes on the windows, then made wood grilles to attach to the
exterior of the sunroom’s windows to create the illusion of multi-paned sash.
Blaudeau and
Dailey have travelled the world and display their collections throughout their
home. Wood carvings from a cannibal tribe in Bali, glimmering fabrics from the
Far East, tribal cloths from Africa: All can
be found.
The kitchen
connects to the dining room via a pantry, its shelves covered with fanciful
paintings of monkeys, a favorite theme of Dailey’s. The partners decided that a
dramatic updating of the kitchen was not what they wanted for the house.
“It was the
era of sleek granite countertops and stainless steel appliances,” Dailey
explained. “Those just did not seem to fit what the house is all about.” So the
original cabinets remained and the room was repainted in Dailey’s signature
Crayola style: Golden yellow for the walls, red for the wainscoting and coca
for the trim and cabinets. The colors serve as a perfect backdrop for the
owners’ collection of oversized folk art.
Blaudeau and Dailey reserve the downstairs of the mammoth
house for a constant stream of family members and out-of-town guests, especially
over Jazz Fest weekends because of the home’s proximity to the Fairgrounds.
With 11 rooms on each floor, there is plenty of space for everyone. Guest
quarters exhibit the same personality as the upstairs, but the house would not
appeal as much as it does without the lush front garden.
“I put in a
traditional garden at first,” said Dailey, who with Richard Sacher owns American Aquatic Gardens
on Elysian Fields Avenue.
“But when I drove up one day, I realized it was all wrong for the house, so I
took it out and started over.”
Today, fan
palms and ferns of many varieties complement one another in the space. Cacti
and bromeliads add texture. Proportions are perfect, thanks to Dailey’s
knowledge of how to arrange greenery of varying sizes and textures. A striking
metal orb serves as a fountain and various garden sculptures – a Thai lion, for
example – nestle into the foliage. Along the driveway, vintage doors painted
with exuberant sunflowers serve as a privacy fence. The sunflowers – like the
“rug” on the downstairs floor and the patterns on the stairwell ceiling – were
painted by Dailey, whose studio occupies a room downstairs at the rear of the
house.
“When we
first bought this house, one of my friends broke down in tears, certain that I
had gone over the edge and would go bankrupt trying to fix it up,” Dailey said.
“Now they make the downstairs their second home and love the place as much as
Erick and I do.”
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