11:09 PM CST on Saturday, November 12, 2005

WWL-TV

In every New Orleans neighborhood, people are gutting their homes in an attempt to rebuild and restore.

The Lower Ninth Ward is no exception where today, some residents and their friends decided to have a little fun with the house gutting process.

An ordinary day of hard work adopted the look and feel of a full-fledged weekend house party.

Kathleen Kraus's Lower Ninth Ward home was damaged by Hurricane Katrina. While she may not possess many resources, Kraus says she does have a lot of friends.

"It's been amazing,” she said. “They gutted the whole house almost in one day."

Kraus and her friends dubbed the necessary task a "house gutting party" or more aptly, a "gutfest."

"It's good just to see Kathleen breath a little easier," said Kraus's friend Sandy Hester.

 "I had no doubt that I was coming over here to help out and then tomorrow people are coming to help me," Hester said.

Kraus, who lives right next to the levee, says her house flooded during the storm and her roof was blown away.

Without knowing what will happen with the levees, she says it's hard to decide what to do beyond this point. But having lived in the Lower Ninth Ward for almost nine years, Kraus says that she has no plans to leave the neighborhood.

More than half of the people who live in the Lower Ninth Ward actually own their own homes and throughout the area you can find pockets of people trying to put their lives back together again. Despite all of the controversy these residents say they know exactly why the Ninth ward is coming back.

"Gutfest" continues tomorrow as Kraus's group plans to move from one friend's house to another until all the homes have been gutted.