A rennovation exploration

life in the gutter

This past week brought about unplanned project number 217 in the form of new rain gutters and sorta planned but not really project number 33 as a new water heater.

The snow from last week was mostly slush and it took down the already precariously perched gutters on the south side of the house. The previous owner was nice enough to ruin the gutters on the front of the house when she moved out. The two sections together just didn't do anything for runoff. Also, note the stylish butter knife that was supporting one end of the gutters.



After some quick calls to the gutter repair places it became obvious that we'd be losing a weekend doing the project. Estimates came in from $1100-$1375...about 1050 more than we had hoped. We were initially excited because vinyl gutters looked cheap at the depot. Oh how easily we're lead in. The gutters are cheap, $3.50 for a 10 foot section. What that doesn't say, however, is that you'll need 5 hangers at $2 each, two connectors at $5 each and a bunch of other crap at $too much each. Suddenly we're looking at hundreds of dollars, and we haven't even climbed up the scary ladder yet!

Fortunately the gutters went in without too much hassle. If you're doing your own we highly recommend doing them from the roof (unless it's steep and scary like ours) or scaffolding. it's a royal pain to try and install gutters when you stand under them on a ladder and lean backwards to reach over the top. The installation isn't quite sloped how we'd like but it'll work. it's hard to keep the gutters from adjusting as the screw goes in when the fascia board underneath is rotten. Stay tuned for a future blog titled "unplanned project 924 - Fascia falls off."

The water heater has been Mark's favorite project so far. Aside from the sears guy being late (he didn't have the phone number, after calling the right phone number to confirm the appointment....??) he just went to work and put in the heater, even cleaned up his own mess. we need to have more installations that can be supervised from the couch.

posted by Our House @ 12:49 PM