Neighbors jokingly refer to the Mayne's new house as the Jetsons' house (from the cartoon).

The Mayne's house is engineered and built to withstand 130 mph winds and only water resistant materials- concrete block, primed steel, and treated wood - are used beneath the elevated living space.

Design and construction took about two years. It was 2008 before the Mayne's finally came back home.

Alan and Linda Mayne's house in the Lakeview neighborhood of New Orleans had never flooded before and they did not anticipate any problems as Hurricane Katrina approached Louisiana in late summer 2005. They did hear predictions that water might overtop the 17th Street Canal levee near their home, but still they were not concerned. Their house was a raised style that sat 4 feet above the ground. The Maynes expected their property might receive maybe 2 feet of water, but that would not be a problem.

The Maynes made preparations to evacuate with their two daughters Sunday morning. They packed clothes for a few days and left plenty of water and food for their two outside cats. They would never see the cats again.

The Mayne family headed to Hattiesburg, Miss. to stay with Linda Mayne's family. On the way, the stopped in Slidell and picked up Alan Mayne's elderly parents to bring with them. Hattiesburg turned out not to be the best choice as it also was affected by the hurricane. Without power and water, everyone had to bathe in the pond. There were too many people and too little resources, so after a few days the Maynes moved on to Brandon, Miss. to stay with Linda Mayne's aunt. Alan Mayne took his parents to their farm in Kentucky and flew back to be with this family. They eventually spent a few days in a motel in Jackson, Miss.

It was while in Brandon they first started seeing images of the devastation in their city. It took a while to absorb the fact that the houses they saw were flooded were in Lakeview. As they watched the new footage, they recognized a house on Filmore Street near their home. The water was up to its roof. Linda Mayne knew then that there would be water in her home, but she believed it wouldn't be much. "We could deal with 2 feet of water in the house. That's okay." But when they got online to see the satellite images of the city, they could no longer deny the reality of what had really happened to their home.

The Mayne family didn't know where to go or what to do. At one point, Alan Mayne heard that the city of Slidell had been opened and he traveled down to check on his parents' house. He discovered the house had not received flood waters and was livable. They moved to Slidell and stayed for a couple of weeks.

Their next stop was Metairie, a suburb of New Orleans. Linda Mayne's sister's home in Metairie had flooded, but by this time the house had been gutted. The family moved in, despite the conditions, just grateful to be together and closer to home. They all slept in one room; they made do. But it was still not a great situation. The mold had begun to grow in the damp and became pervasive.

It was the first week of October when the Maynes first saw their home again. One of their daughter's friends, a New Orleans policeman, drove them into the neighborhood. "The place looked like nuclear winter," they report. "Totally gray. Like an Ansell Adams picture. There was nothing. Nothing on the trees. No birds. No lizards. Just total gray." Their house, 4 feet above ground, had taken in 5 feet of water.

Lakeview had been their home for 22 years. They were deeply entrenched in and attached to the neighborhood. And although Linda Mayne initially wanted to move to Colorado, the pull of home was to great and the family knew they would stay. "Our girls lost everything they had, but they wanted to come home," says Linda Mayne. "They needed a sense of their roots."

Facing the loss of their home was difficult. "I was depressed and crying. We had stuff from his (Alan Mayne) grandfather," Linda pauses. "Just a lot of sentimental things." The worst was the loss of pictures and Linda Mayne's great-aunt's piano. It had been a wedding present to the great-aunt and it passed down to Linda Mayne. She had taken piano lessons on it and enjoyed playing it.

Also painful was the loss of their two cats. The Maynes searched everywhere, even driving to Gonzales where an emergency animal shelter was set up for animals rescued after Katrina. The cats were never found. They like to believe that the cats survived and were now living with a family who adopted them.

Meanwhile, at Linda Mayne's sister's house, the mold had become unbearable. Everyone was suffering ill effects from the contaminated home. The Mayne family searched for housing and when they heard of an apartment in Metairie, they took it sight unseen. When they moved in, they discovered their unit overlooked the broken 17th Street Canal - the failure of which destroyed their home.

The Maynes repeatedly went back to the Milne Street house looking for things they could salvage. Much to their amazement, their daughter's pet white mouse who had been left in his cage with food and water, was still alive. He was skinny and even had mold growing on him, but he had survived. "All he did was eat after that," laughs Linda Mayne, still bewildered as to how the little creature had made it through.

On one trip, Linda Mayne found two necklaces that were special to her. She had planned to pass them down to her daughters and now she could. They retrieved a framed photo of one of their daughters, intact only because it had been hung high enough on the wall to be above the flood waters. Also salvaged were a rug and a framed print. The print hangs on their wall today, despite what the Maynes call the '"Katrina patina" that is evident in spots.

The trips to the home didn't often yield salvageable items, but Linda Mayne reports that they would often go "just to visit it." "It was a grieving period really," she says. "And we just kept wanting to see if we could salvage anything else." They returned again and again until one day Linda Mayne felt "the house looked so sad."

Finally able to let go, the Maynes made the decision to tear it down and build again. It was time to move on. Rather than trying to clean and repair the old house, they knew they had to build new. "We'd never be able to clean out everything - even if we gutted," says Alan Mayne about the mold and muck left from 5 feet of water standing in the home for three weeks.

Once the decision was made, the Maynes set about designing their new house. Using a computer program, they intended to design the house "along the lines of a mid-city raised home." But it was not as easy as they thought. "No matter what we did it just looked like a box," says Linda Mayne. So they turned to their computer again, but this time to the internet to search for modern New Orleans architecture.

The photo that popped up was a shot of local architect Byron Mouton's own house in Uptown. The caption just reported that the designer was an architect and professor at the Tulane School of Architecture (TSA), but gave no name. Intrigued by the photo, Al Mayne drove around looking for the house. When he saw it, he said "Wow. That could be something."

Later the Maynes read an article in the New Orleans Times-Picayune "Inside Out" that featured Mouton's URBANbuild program. "I thought it looked pretty cool," says Alan Mayne. He visited Mouton's website and from there found the TSA faculty. When he came across a photo of Mouton's house, he made the connection.

They decided to email Mouton and see where it led. Al Mayne remembers the phone call with Mouton. "He said 'so you saw the website, you saw what I do, and you're still interested . . ." Clients and architect hit it off and said, "let's do it."

Because of the need to keep the house "as is" until the insurance adjuster and an appraiser could view it. it was September 2006 by the time they were able to have the old house torn down. They had flood and homeowners' insurance and after almost two years, received Road Home assistance as well. This would help them be able to rebuild.

The Maynes started the design process by preparing the wish list of things they wanted in the new house that Mouton had requested. They knew for sure that they wanted to be elevated above the 9-foot waterline from the flood. And because they were to elevate 10 feet, they wanted to use the space underneath for parking and entertaining space.

Other things on their list was an open floor plan, plenty of windows and recessed balconies. One of the things the Maynes enjoyed most during their stay in the motel in Metairie was the balcony. They loved to sit outside and knew that they wanted the same opportunities in their new home.

As neighbors watched the contemporary house take form, they were very interested. Some joked and referred to it as the "Jetsons' house." But not just neighbors were intrigued. People driving by would stop and want to explore the house. "We gave a lot of tours," report the Maynes. And the tours and interest hasn't stopped. "Even today," says Al Mayne almost a year after moving in. "We have on average five people a day stopping."

Design and construction of the home took about two years and it was July 2008 when the Maynes finally came home. They love the new house and feel it works well for them, just as they had hoped. Smaller than the original house, the new one was designed to the last square inch for function and flow.

The main living space is 2 feet by 6 feet, wood frame construction elevated on concrete block walls. There is plenty of parking and covered outdoor living space underneath, as well as a work area for Alan Mayne. The house is engineered and built to withstand 130 mph winds and only water resistant materials- concrete block, primed steel, and treated wood - are used beneath the elevated living space.

The house was oriented to provide a cross flow of breezes when the windows are open. With the windows open and the ceiling fans on, the Maynes find their usage of the air conditioner has greatly decreased. Large banks of windows provide plenty of natural light and are all made with Low-E glass panes. Innovative screens and shutters add privacy and protection from heat gain and windblown debris from storms. A radiant barrier installed on the underside of the roof deck is another energy efficient feature of the home. The roofs are sloped inward to catch rainwater and funnel it to a cistern which will provide water for irrigation.

Attention to detail was paid to every inch of the home and even to the unlikeliest of components. The shape and alignment of the gutter spouts was deliberate. Rhythmically spaced, the spouts produce cascading waterfalls past the large expanse of windows in the kitchen and main living areas when it rains.

The new home is a success and more livable than the old one. But the Maynes do not forget the lesson they learned. "When we evacuate," says Linda. "You better believe everything goes with me!"