Guttering a house is man's work. It relies on the masculine qualities of geometric thinking, upper-body strength, and a willingness to suffer sheet-metal cuts.

I wrote about acquiring the gutters here. The project took on a certain urgency with our spring rains. Water spills too fast for the French drain to draw it out to the alley, so much of it ends up in the crawlspace, unsettling me. Too many vital structural members down there, all of them made of wood. They don't actually get wet, but they're within a foot or two of the waves, and that's too close. In my annual inspection down there, I want a moonscape to creep across, not a swamp.

Also, the gutters we acquired were so long I could only store them flat across the backyard, where they turned the grass yellow unless I moved them a couple of feet each day. So this stuff had to get installed, pronto.

This project could not have been more timely. Wife and kids out of town, a free 10-foot ladder from the last moments of a garage sale, and Sir Galahad available for a couple of hours when I needed help. The big blessing was, I had enough to do the whole back of the house, which is where I needed it most.

Online how-tos suggest cutting gutters with tin snips, and that worked almost as well as using them to pick one's nose. I got out the hacksaw and hearing protection, because the sound of sawing through gutters is the stuff Hell is made of.

the inevitable one-hour trip to Big Box Home Improvement came about the two-thirds mark, when I had to buy pipe and adaptors to link the middle downspout to an underground drain pipe. This should have been a 30-minute trip, but Big Box had no pipe, prompting a drive to Other Big Box, whose fittings came in a matching color. So there will be another trip to the first Big Box for refund.

It always takes longer than I think.

While I studied the pipe fittings at Other Big Box, the sound system played "Got to Get You Into My Life," and I had to restrain myself from dancing right there in the aisle. I loved that song as a kid. Was it Earth, Wind & Fire? google check Yup. And tons better than the Beatles' original, which sounded like a band trying to be the Beatles. In '78 I went looking for the single at Don's Record Shop, a little retailer who probably got mowed down years ago by the Internets, if not by ... google check ... he's still there!

Don was a balding hippie who loved music, and he had the widest -- and only, for that matter -- record selection in Bellaire. He could find you anything, and charged accordingly. Singles were $1.25 plus tax. I don't know what he charged for albums because I only bought them at the head shop/record store that opened in my teens, and always had a wall o' Fleetwood Mac LPs, the one with the naked boy and old man that would've been banned today.

Ah, where was I? Earth, Wind & Fire. (I'll grant them an exception to the serial-comma rule, like law firms.) The era of huge black bands with a happy horn section. They could even cover the Beatles and make it more fun than the Beatles ever were. Even a dumb original like "Groove Line" had so much momentum, you paid no attention to how hokey the lyrics were. A fushion of Motown and disco, it was. I could listen to that stuff all day.

the job turned into an all-day affair, as these things tend to when I don't know what I'm doing. My dark jersey bore white sweat stains—hard to believe that much salt comes out of one's skin—and all the ladder-climbing and stretching rendered my jeans unwearable. They were already unfit for polite company—the aft crotch showed underwear if I leaned over—and I heard them tear a little bit each time I got more than 30 degrees of thigh angle going.

But there was work to do, and yards of guttering before I sleep. The arms do the work, but it's the legs that hurt afterward. Once I gooped sealer into the crevices and retired the buzz saw (long story), I showered and settled into a yoga pose that brought the calves back to life. Sir Galahad dropped in for port and cigars, and we stared disbelievingly at the soupy mess we poured out of the bottle he brought with him. Something terrible had happened to the port. Cosmic rays? Neither of us dared taste it. So we killed most of a Corona 12-pack and solved the world's problems out on the back patio. The gutters did not fall on us, a plus.

On follow-up day, the Big Box trip turned into an hour because I forgot the second receipt I needed for a refund on all the junk I overbought. Oh, and in the aisles, the gutter sealer I needed was nowhere to be found, and neither was the help.

Walking around the store, my drill holster got more than a couple of double-takes. Squeeky bought me this four years ago, just after I'd expressed great frustration at the tendency of cordless drills to fall down at every opportunity. It looks like a gun holster, if gun holsters were gray, nylon, and branded with PORTER CABLE. I didn't want to take my belt off prior to leaving the house, so I just wore the holster to Big Box with nothing in it. That's my excuse, anyway.

Finishing things up, I got silicone sealer in my hair. It will never come out. Being black, I figure it'll work like that infomercial stuff to cover bald spots.

Oh, and the gutter guards.  I ordered 75 feet of hinged guards, then discovered today they are nigh impossible to put in place once the gutters are installed. Too bad you can't sue over stuff like this, because they also cut flesh like razor blades.

I know, "a willingness to suffer sheet-metal cuts." These aren't sheet metal. More like paper, and those are worse.

Posted by: Michael Rittenhouse at 06:56 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 1039 words, total size 6 kb.