Gutter Talk

Last Wednesday, I checked my email to find that someone was giving away rain gutters. Her husband did not like to clean them so they were tearing them down. I jumped on the offer and explained in email that Hubby and I would love to have these gutters to put up on our home. I went on to tell her that we are working on improving an older property (40 years old in a Military town) as inexpensively as we can.

The lady gave us the gutters because we were actually going to use them and not just sell them for aluminum scrap!

Yesterday, my Beloved and I put them up. Our house is a smaller (1100 sq ft) ranch house with a peak on one side of the roof structure. We put the gutters on the flat side and still have enough to do the front and possibly the back of the Hubby’s small workshop.

Our total monetary investment in the entire job (house and workshop) is $18. This was the cost of the end caps, downspout cut out thing, and brackets. We mainly reused the screws and stuff already attached to the gutters. At one point, we thought we’d need to go out and purchase a piece to join the two lengths we used for the front of the house. At my suggestion, Hubby fabricated his own piece from the scraps. That is $5 or so saved right there! Hubby estimates that the total cost would have been around $175 if we’d purchased new from the home improvement store.

Incidentally, these gutters are the higher quality ones not the flimsy ones that one would buy and install themselves. We got high quality gutters for $18 and some sweat equity!

I should add that we have quite a few tools around our house. Hubby used a chop saw, a caulk gun, pliers, and a drill that we already own to complete the job. The whole thing was done in less than 2 hours.

The house looks different now. I think it looks more put together. We still need to hose them off but they look great! The best thing about them is when it rains, we won’t have a mini lake in front of our porch!