Pimp My FEMA Trailer
Story by Renée Peck, InsideOut Editor

Over at the 2006 New Orleans Auto Show in the Morial Convention Center this weekend, West Coast Customs chop shop operators Alex and Big Dane, who rode to fame on the MTV hit show "Pimp My Ride," are dishing advice on specialty lights and raised suspensions. And perhaps, the press materials note coyly, they may even offer tips on pimping a FEMA trailer.

But InsideOut got there first.

Our makeover of a standard-issue, 7-by-30 foot FEMA trailer proved that even the lowliest space can go from ugly to outstanding. "Extreme Makeover: Trailer Edition" meets "Pimp My Ride" in this cutting-edge conversion of the city's ubiquitous -- and mundane -- housing icon into a stand-out example of cutting-edge chic.

Tune in to catch the entire episode.

THE CAST

Designers Bryan Batt and Tom Cianfichi, owners of Hazelnut, a fine accessories store on Magazine Street

Jennie Ambrozewski, a personable almost-octogenarian with -- for better or worse -- a new FEMA trailer

THE CREW

Assistant stylist Katy Danos, Hazelnut manager and general factotum for the FEMA makeover

Décor-Us Inc.: Seamstress sisters Margaret Brady, Trisha Molony, Etchie Yauger and Jeanne Morehiser, who can whip up anything at a moment's notice, including a perfectly proportioned three-piece slipcover set for a FEMA fold-out couch

THE SETTING

A Cavalier travel trailer, standard FEMA issue: beige vinyl wallpaper, faux wood tabletop, brown area rugs and red floral upholstery

THE STORYLINE

A Broadway star and design guru (Batt), returning from the Atlanta gift market to his home accessories store in New Orleans, meets an exuberant great-grandmother (Ambrozewski) on the plane. They strike up a conversation, find they have a common destination and swap life stories. Our leading man juggles jobs between Manhattan and Magazine Street. Our heroine has been homeless since 20 feet of floodwater consumed her beloved 2,200-square-foot Chalmette home. She has been "hopscotching" around, staying for a month or two at a time with various sons (she has three) and daughters (four). When they meet, she's expecting, at any moment, a FEMA trailer to call her own. As fate would have it, he has recently been approached by the local newspaper's home and garden magazine to do a trailer décor overhaul. It's a match made in makeover heaven.

SPECIAL CREDITS

SPECIAL THANKS TO:

Gayle Batt, Bryan's mom, who loaned her silk flowers

Basics Underneath, 5513 Magazine St., which provided the silk peignoir

THE PILOT

"I fell in love with her," said Bryan Batt of 78-year-old Jennie Ambrozewski. "She had such joie de vivre, even though she had lost everything. It's so wonderful to meet people -- particularly older people -- who have been through the worst and can still look at everything as a gift."

When Ambrozewski got her FEMA trailer in early March, Batt and Hazelnut co-owner Tom Cianfichi went to work converting it from run-of-the-mill cracker box to top-of-the-line pied-à-terre.

Since the trailer was installed at Ambrozewski's daughter's house in Picayune, Miss., an hour's drive away, we offered the designers the use of a local trailer, belonging to a Times-Picayune editor, for measuring and planning purposes. They would install the new decor in the New Orleans trailer, bring Ambrozewski in to see it, and then send her home with a carload of toile and tulle and tweed for her new Mississippi digs.

The size of the job was small in scope, but immense in required expertise: FEMA trailers are designed for industrial use, compactness and conformity. Individuality is not a touted feature.

This one had wine-colored floral upholstery on the pull-out sofa and twin benches flanking the Formica dining table. The designers decided they could work with the cream-colored vinyl walls, but the padded window valences had to go. The glued-down brown rugs could be camouflaged, but the drab beige bedroom cried for color, color, color.

The principal fabric they would use in the living/dining area was a given: Hazelnut's trademark toile, featuring old New Orleans scenes, in green.

"Green signifies a new start, new life," said Batt. "Plus everything in the trailer is very industrial, very sterile," added Cianfichi. Green would bring images of spring and rebirth. And a sense of hope.

The two turned to a quartet of seamstress sisters for help in turning yards of toile into custom shades and slipcovers. Margaret Brady and her three siblings have hardly had time to look up from their needles since Katrina, but they immediately signed on to measure and make window and furniture coverings for the trailer redo.

"We've been wanting to do something," said Brady, who visited the trailed several times to measure and then brainstormed FEMA coverage with her sisters. "We didn't realize it would be such a challenge -- since the couch folds out, all the pieces had to be separate."

Contrasting materials were easy to find; Batt collects bits and pieces of unusual fabrics, lengths of ribbon and unique trims. During his last Broadway stint, in "La Cage aux Folles," he and one of the actresses would sit backstage "and do silly things with pillows -- decorate them with brooches or feathers."

For the FEMA makeover, Batt chose pink satin pillows bordered with chocolate and rose-colored ribbon, propped saucily on the slip-covered sofa and dining benches. A square of bleached burlap got a ribbon hem to serve as tablecloth, and the shades were laced with pink and green ribbon ending in bows for a girlish touch.

"My grandmother's favorite color was dusty rose," said Batt, who went for a "real New Orleans genteel lady" feel in the living area. Like his client, the space has sassy accents, too: a pert green frog on a side table, giant pink silk dahlias as napkin rings.

"The room is very feminine, but crisp and trim, too," said Hazelnut manager Katy Danos. "It's a small space, so you can't do big poufs and bows."

"There's nothing frightfully expensive here," Batt added. "It shows you can make a sensational environment with things that are functional and practical."

Making things meaningful helps shape a space, too. Back during that plane ride, when Batt asked Ambrozewski what she had lost, she replied in a word: Everything.

"I said, 'There's not even a picture left?' " Batt recalled. "She told me, 'No, but it doesn't matter. They're all tattooed on my heart, darlin.' "

It mattered to Batt, however. He called Ambrozewski's daughter and asked her to contact her siblings for family photos and e-mail them to New Orleans. Cianfichi downloaded and printed the snapshots, and arranged more than a dozen prints in two collage frames for the living room wall. Another picture of Ambrozewski and her children went into a frame for the bedside table.

If the living area was designed to be sweet and ladylike, the bedroom is totally boudoir.

"We wanted to bring some glamour and elegance into the trailer," said Batt. "It's very Hollywood, which is in right now," Danos agreed.

Certainly, Lana Turner wouldn't turn a hair in Ambrozewski's new bedroom. The silk bedspread of Fortuni pleating screams '40s screen star, but came from Linens-N-Things. Pillows of bouclé, tweed and silk charmeuse sport silk posies, thick fringe, beads and rose-hued rhinestone pins.

"They're not typical bedroom fabrics, but more couture stuff -- things you'd see on the fashion runway," Danos said.

Sprays of silk cherry blossoms, tucked into a hammered silver pitcher that sits next to a lotus-blossom tea light holder, fill a corner. The ambiance is lush and slightly sentimental, with a hint of decadence.

As in the living room, the mood lies in the accents. A lacquer tray sits rakishly on the bed, holding a china cup and three dainty iced cupcakes. A book -- "Why New Orleans Matters" -- is propped open, and a cream silk and lace peignoir hangs from an ornate brass hook. Above the bed is a photograph, taken by Batt, of a cemetery angel.

"To watch over her," he said.     [continued...]

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