J and I are planners, and we like to plan ahead for projects around the house. There's a saying that God laughs at our plans, and sometimes I think that our house is His comedy club. We've been aware for years that our deck would need to be replaced, and made it a savings goal this year to complete the project this summer. Just for kicks, I decided to ask Lowes to give us a quote on fully replacing it for us. Apparently Lowes is my comedy club! While much faster, going the non-DIY route is also at least three times more expensive than we planned for. We now have a DIY Deck Building book and a promise from my dad to help when we're ready to tackle it ourselves.
Luckily, the MP has provided us plenty of time to read the book and plan our deck. You see, we need new gutters. As in, the snow and ice this winter gouged out a gap between the gutter and house, and the foot of rain we've received in the last month has done more damage than we can live with. So, while we want to use the money we saved all winter to replace the deck, we have to spend most of it on gutters (and the wood to hold them up) instead. Argh. MP Comedy Club, open for business.
3 comments:
Oh, that sucks! So sorry crazy stuff keeps happening :( We had to replace our gutters last fall. At least your sump pump is working - as evidenced by the relative pond back behind your house ;)
Thanks! Who did you use for your gutters? One of the quotes we got seemed crazy-expensive but included a lifetime warranty. Given everything we know about this house, that's awfully tempting! :) Sump pump continues to pump away happily! I hate it for the walkers/bikers, but love it for our basement!
I have a few peices of advice. First, get a gutter guy to do the gutters, don't DIY that. Here's why: what you want are single extrusion gutters: no seams. Bottom line: if you have a seam it will leak. Yes, you can all kinds of thing to make it not leak...and they might work for a while. But ultimately, they leak.
Advice 2. Go for the leaf guards. Best thing going.
Advice 3. When you do get around to doing the deck, get the expensive plastic decking (that looks like wood, but is made of plastic). One note on that, 12" joists, not 16", otherwise they sag when it get really hot. But, I loved mine in the old house, and plan on using them when I redo our deck (soon) in the new one.
Post a Comment