Desperate times call for desperate measures, y’all.
I’m sure I’ve told you about our little old house before. It’s really old, really small, and was in really bad condition before we moved in. We gutted the entire house, and basically rebuilt it from the inside out. This is my favorite picture of our house, circa a long, long time ago:
Yep.
We live here.
Anyway, the big problem with the house was the rotten wood. Termites had taken over and practically destroyed every piece of wood. There were a couple of reasons for this. Most of the wood wasn’t salt treated. And the biggest problem was that the house was practically built on the ground, so the wood stayed damp and wet, and created a exotic paradise for the termites. That’s a nice little visual for you.
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| mid-remodel |
We remodeled the house piece by piece, and actually moved in before we were finished with the outside. We eventually got a new roof, and some new siding, but never got any guttering.
So our semi-newly remodeled house sat, without guttering, for 3 years. And this is a really big deal if your house has termites. The lack of guttering was keeping the house moist. Rainwater was pooling at the base of our house and keeping the house damp. We spent lots of time and money working with the bug guy to get rid of the termites. He said he could only do so much to help us, because unless we got guttering, it would only be a temporary fix.
We wanted to get our house guttered, too. We’d wanted to get it guttered for 3 years for pete’s sake! We had people come and look at it, give us estimates, and promised us the sun, moon, and stars. But nobody ever came. Seriously, we started harassing people to come put gutters on our house. We called. We left messages. We begged and pleaded. But no one ever showed up. And those who showed interest were going to charge us an arm and a leg. And quite frankly, I wanted to keep both arms and legs, so we passed.
And you know what we just did, y’all?
We done gone and put gutterin’ on our house.
Yep. All by ourselves.
One day last week we got fed up. We were tired of spending money on termite junk, and tired of people never showing up, so we hopped on Google and got to work. We googled anything and everything about guttering. We watched videos. We took notes.
And then we went to work.
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| junk in the yard. caution, idiots at work! |
To save even more money, we used the old, bent up guttering that was originally on the house. It was pretty beat up, so we spent some time pounding out the dents.
We measured, and cut, and measured, and cut. And then used some pretty impressive tools.
It took us three days (during nap times mostly) and some extra hands from Ben’s buddy, Gio, but we did it. And once we finished, we realized why nobody wanted to mess with it. Our house, as sweet as it may be, is a crooked as a politician. Nothing is level. The roof slants downhill, and then uphill. It was a mess trying to get the correct slope for a good drain.
But at the end of the day, we did it. It ain’t pretty, and it ain’t fancy, but it works. It drains and it keeps the water away from the house and that’s all that matters. And the best part about it is that we did it by ourselves. And this is coming from two people who know nothing about house-fixing-upping. Seriously, I was so pumped. We sprayed water on the roof and when it drained correctly, you would have thought we won the lottery.
We ended up saving a good deal of money in the long run, too. We’re talking at least $200-300 by doing it ourselves, and another $500 or so by reusing our old guttering. And by the way, I would totally post a step-by-step, how-to, except I really have no idea how we did it. Have you ever did something like that before? Get something done and not remember how you did it? Or drive from point A to point B and pull into the parking lot of point B and not have a clue how you got there, and panic, wondering if you ran any stop signs or hit any pedestrians? Anybody? Just me? Ok.
So, friends, the moral of this story is that if you are cheap enough, driven enough, and know how operate Google, you can do just about anything you dang well please!
Have you guys tackled any DIY projects lately? Any that seemed really intimidating? Anything you should’ve left to the pros?
Have a blessed Tuesday 🙂
