Restoring previous home folder after turning off FileVault

HI Folks,
I turned FileVault on a long time ago and because of its size didn't turn it off before upgrading to Leopard. After the upgrade, it became obvious that FileVault had to go--it was occupying essentially the whole hard drive and spotlight didn't work. I searched out some instructions on how to work around FV to make space and found this article: http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1974?viewlocale=en_US.
I followed the instructions to the letter except when I got the part where it says "Copy files from the disk image to your new account," I ran into trouble. Thinking it wasn't that big a deal, telling myself I could solve the issue later, I proceeded to nuke enough files in my original user account to give FV the room it needed to turn off. This included (stupid me) my LIbrary folder. When enough space was created, FV turned off and spotlight now works fine.
I won the battle but lost the war... That's because in Leopard, unlike Tiger (for which the instructions were written), you can't simply "Highlight all items in the sparse disk image and drag them into your new account's home folder." Not allowed.
I have everything safely stored on my handy external drive but other than transferring folder by folder, is there any other way to restore my home folder? Is there some super-secret workaround or is this the cautionary tale to all you other folks out there (like we need to hear it again): don't get impatient and pay attention to which operating system the instructions were written for. Tiger's troubleshooting articles are not interchangeable with Leopard's.
Hope I am saving someone else some grief by airing my tale of woe.
Best wishes,
T

Hi VK
Following the instructions in the link, I made a sparse disk image on an external drive and selected all items in my Home and copied them (by dragging) to the mounted sparse disk image.
Thanks,
t

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