Our House

We have had a crazy-wet spring and summer, and while it’s meant we never have to water our garden, our house itself has NOT been handling it well. You see, at no point in the nearly 100 years of its existence had anyone thought to put gutters on it - something we see as a bit of a necessity. This lack of gutters has led to a steady erosion of the concrete on one side of the house, and water was getting into the basement every single time it rained.

Over the years different half-assed approaches were taken to deal with the problem - angled cement was put up against the foundation to push away water (which just broke into pieces, and trapped water behind it), water resistant paint was applied on the foundation (not effective!), and someone even thought that digging small holes along the concrete on the side of the house would work to pull away the water.

Well, we decided to use our whole ass, and got gutters installed. Because our house had crown molding on the outide, a number of contractors refused to work on it, but after a few months of calls we finally got someone to install them! The installation involved removing the molding, disposing of it properly (because of lead paint yay!), and finally adding 2x4’s to provide a flat surface for gutter mounting.

Before:

After:

We clearly need to pain the 2x4’s (and the house, if that peeling paint is any indication), but it’s not too visible behind the gutters.

The white line on the bottom right of the pavement there is where water had been falling from the roof onto the concrete before the gutters were installed:

Anyways! The water in the basement has ceased, proving once and for all that you shouldn’t put off for 100 years what you can afford to do today!