Cleaning Rain Gutters

Rain Gutters provide a major purpose in routing water away from one of the largest surface area of a house, your roof. By channeling the water away from your house, it actually ends up protecting the siding, windows, doors, and even the foundation of your home.

I pulled the following from a DIY website, which describes the many components to a typical aluminum gutter system that may be used around your home. Regardless of how it is setup, how it looks, or the material of the system, it's primary purpose is to keep water away from your home.

When we first moved in, we realized after the first few rain showers, that water was spilling over the edges of the gutters in multiple different locations around the house. After inspecting the gutters, I realized that they were filled with leaves and silt so water was not able to make it to the drop outlet to drain away from my house.

I gathered the following items: a ladder, heavy duty gloves, garbage bag and my garden hose with an affixed pistol grip spout. I'm not going to glorify this task, it's not fun nor is it an interesting project. Add on to the start of winter, cold weather in a wet working environment did not make for a good combination, so if you can, check your gutters when the climate is to your advantage.

Thus the project begins, start digging into gutter and remove all the excess leaves and silt that has accumulated since it's last cleaning, if ever, and place into the garbage bag. I ended up tying one end of the garbage bag to one of the higher rungs of the ladder so I have one hand to hold onto the structure while the free hand was pulling the obstruction out of the gutter.

Once I was able to remove most of the obstruction, I took the garden hose and adjusted the nozzle so that I would expel a high velocity of water. I started from the opposite end of the gutter or close to an end cap furthest from where the downspout is located and sprayed the remainder of the loose dirt out. You may need to bring back the garbage bag to pull more loose dirt once it starts accumulating again. For parts of the gutter that had two downspouts on either end, I would start in the middle or where it seemed to be the lowest point in between either drop outlet.

In the middle of this project, I realized that it is something I do not want to do again, or at least I would need to find a way to prolong having to do this again. I went to the local Home Improvement store and purchased snap-on Gutter Guards; they come in multiple types and colors that are available. I prefer the ones that are depicted below; they appear to far more durable and simpler to attach. They are a couple dollars per 3 feet segments. They do come in cartons, which also helps in saving a few extra dollars. These guards have an embedded mesh wiring in-between the plastic body which allows water to filter through while keeping debris out of the gutter system.

Image pulled from Home Depot Website, depicting Amerimax 3ft Snap-in Gutter Guard

To install, take the end of the gutter guard with the lip and snap to the part of the gutter that is away from the wall of the house. You will hear and feel it snap into place with little effort. Once the tongue of the gutter guard is in place, take the flat end and place it between the roof apron and the shingles of the house. It may take a little bit of manipulating of the shingles and the gutter guard for it to be properly installed. Continue doing this until your gutters are completely covered by the guard. You will be need sheers or heady duty scissors to cut the end pieces of the guard to allow for proper fit.

Image pulled from Home Depot Website, depicting Amerimax 3ft Snap-in Gutter Guard

Since putting on the gutter guards, I have yet to go through the drill of cleaning the gutters of any excessive debris like I did the first year. I still go up and periodically to check the gutters (once every 6-months) just as a precautionary measure. Also the periodic checks allows me to identify any pieces that have been damaged in the elements, I have the opportunity to replace the damaged piece before it becomes a bigger issue later. Overall, this was only a few hours worth of work on a single weekend day.

Removing Outdated Window Cornices and Installing New Window Treatments

We have been very busy all winter, so busy that I have not been able to post about all the work we have done.  This project was an easy one, and can be done in half a day.  A window "cornice" is a wooden valence that goes over the window for decorative purposes.  It sits like a three sided box and hides the top part of the window frame.  You can also install curtain rods right into the wooden sides of the box instead of the wall.  Also, as was the case in our house, the cornice can have lights inside to light up the window area at night.  I suppose that would be necessary because the cornice makes the area look very dark.

Although these window designs were popular at one time many years ago, today it is very uncommon.  Modern day window designs vary, but I think we all agree that curtains and curtain rods are now both functional and decorative, and leave the potential of letting a lot of light into the room. However, I did do some research online and found some modern day cornice designs, as can be seen here:
Modern Cornices

Some of those are nice, but it does not go with the over all design we want for the house.

Here is a picture of several cornices in the living room with the curtains that came with the house:

The theme of the cornices continued throughout the first floor of the house, and even on one wall where there was no window, there was a cornice with a florescent light under the over hang:

To take them down we pried them off with a screw driver, hammer and crow bar.  Removal was a bit difficult because they are all heavy, huge thick pieces of wood, and you are right near a glass window...  Luckily no windows were broken:

To finish this project we had a couple of loose ends to tie up.  First, what to do with all these extra wires from the lights we removed?  Second, we need to compound and paint over the areas were the cornices used to be.  Finally, we need new window treatments.

We decided to only keep the wiring above the wall with no window, and the other lights that were in the windows will not be replaced.  When do you ever see lights above a window?  So here is the track lighting we installed above the wall:

Much better!  The track lighting goes perfect with our decorative bookcase.

Here is what it looked like before so you can easily compare:

 Here is a picture of all the cornices removed:

And finally a picture of the new window treatments after some compounding and one coat of base paint:

One coat of paint does not finish the job, but there are several other projects that we will be doing in this room.  We will not paint the room with a final color until we have finished those other projects.  That includes our next projects of installing insulation in the walls and replacing old windows.

Opening up a staircase with a load bearing wall (To get a bed up of course!)

It all started simple enough, we could not get our queen sized mattress up the staircase. I think the previous homeowners had a mattress with sections, so never had to confront the narrow passageway. The staircase was originally encased on all sides, with a doorway that had a removed door at the bottom. The effect was claustrophobic. Although the walls on either side of the staircase were load bearing, one would have to come down. Why? Well besides from being able to get a bed upstairs....

First, modern designed houses have larger open spaces with each room lending a welcoming view to the next room. Opening up the wall near the staircase would allow people to see that there is a second floor, and how to get there. Second, it allows you to see that there are other rooms on the first floor behind the staircase wall.  This will make the house look larger. Third, it allows heat from the first floor to flow upstairs and warm it better in the winter, improved air circulation!

Lets see what the encased staircase looked prior to any work:

From the above photo you can see how narrow and claustrophobic the staircase was, and in the photo below, you can see how low the wall comes at the top of the frame. It is as high as the door frame right next to it. Definitely not getting a large mattress up there!

Below is a picture of the wall that faces the staircase wall. At the time we had a decorative bookcase against the wall. You would never know that is a staircase behind there. Also, the house feels a bit smaller and it looks like there are just a bunch of doorways every where.

Below is a picture of the same wall with no bookcase and with both doorways on either side of the staircase wall visible:

The first step was to knock down the extra wall above the staircase doorway:

It already looks so much more open! Then the wood paneling (ek!) came off of the outer wall:

Then the cement board came down (note: not sheet rock, sheet rock would have been easier and cleaner, cement board is heavy, dusty and a mess), but the beams holding the weight of the floor above are kept in tact.

Those were left in because we installed a steel beam from one end of the wall to the other end of the stairs to hold the weight of the house and redistribute it from the center beams to the end beams.  That part was slightly complex and required a bit of finesse.  A make shift wall was built right next the weight bearing beams, to hold the ceiling's weight while these beams were cut and the steal beam was inserted in the ceiling.

Installing this required putting a beam on the top and bottom and outer sides, then hammering in the middle beams.  Below is a close up picture of the makeshift beams next to the old ones before they are cut.

Below you can see the steel beam in the ceiling holding the weight after the beams were cut and the extras removed:

The project as of now (without the compounding and paint) looks like this:

And the view is more open:

And as a bonus we took down the wall above the hallway door frame, to make it look more like a hall and less like a door.  This again follows with the modern idea of big open spaces, doorways and views.

One last look at how things were:

Next weekend, we will add in a banister and finish off the walls by compounding and painting.

In case you thought this was easy, it took four weekends of labor, a lot of tools (saws, crow bars, hammers) and back breaking work.  It was also messy, as you can see from my last two pics below ;-)

During the work my cat crawled into the space between the two floors, and it was not easy coaxing him out!  He was so filthy I had to give him a bath :-(

We closed on the house and moved in!

My husband and I are officially home owners now! Moving out was very hectic because we were due out of our apartment a day before we closed. We ended up sleeping on an air mattress in our empty apartment and sneaking out in the wee hours of the morning. We did the final inspection at 7:30am and then went to sign our lives away at the reality office.

I wanted to share some pictures of moving out of our old apartment in the city:

The living room with city views:

Here are some pictures of the new house pre-move-in, while we were doing the final inspection in the morning. This is the last time for a long time that you will be able to see the house empty:


The living room:

The kitchen:

The dining room:

The master bedroom:

Inspections have come back, there is Radon!

How unexpected, yet expected. The previous home owner said that they had a radon test before that came back negative. Maybe it did. However, ours did not. This is Pennsylvania, the state of quarries and rock and stone. To not have Radon in your basement here is almost impossible. So it was expected. As my father told me, people who do not have a radon system in PA are in denial. What is Radon and will this effect our resale of the house? Following what the EPA website says: Radon is a cancer-causing, radioactive gas. You can't see radon. And you can't smell it or taste it. But it may be a problem in your home. Radon is estimated to cause many thousands of deaths each year. That's because when you breathe air containing radon, you can get lung cancer. In fact, the Surgeon General has warned that radon is the second leading cause of lung cancer in the United States today. Only smoking causes more lung cancer deaths. If you smoke and your home has high radon levels, your risk of lung cancer is especially high. Radon can be found all over the U.S. Radon comes from the natural (radioactive) breakdown of uranium in soil, rock and water and gets into the air you breathe. Radon can be found all over the U.S. It can get into any type of building — homes, offices, and schools — and result in a high indoor radon level. I am just surprised that the previous home owner and tenants had radon for so many years and never took care of it.

First Post, What is my story?

My husband and I are still trying to finish all the paperwork on our first house. We have only just completed the back and forth bargaining with the seller (a nice older Lady ready to downsize) and settled on a price. Now all the other nuances have to be taken care of: the inspections, titles and assessment.

At this point we are craving for it all to be done ASAP. My husband and I misjudged how long the whole process will take and our apartment lease ends Sept 10th, but our scheduled close date is Sept 30th. We are going to be homeless for 20 days! However, the most important thing to both of us is that we stop throwing our money down the drain to live in our high rise apartment, and start putting it into an investment that we can get a return from.

Here is a picture of the house that has made all our suffering worthwhile: