Gutter removal & donation button

First post of this year, yay!  

I've added a paypal donation button on the top right of the page for anyone who would like to help us with our restoration! With just me and my mother doing everything by ourselves, it can be daunting to tackle such a large home, especially for 2 ladies alone and it is often expensive. All proceeds will go to painting, paint removal, staining, replacement of wood trim and crown molding including window restoration and replacement (replacement of plastic windows with wooden sash).

Recently, we removed the gutters off the porch, with plans to remove all the gutters eventually, sick of clogged, leaking mildew-filled gutters that are rotting my fascia board and molding, we removed them. Now, no more mildew and potential rot, just as well we had squirrels sit in the gutters and chew the molding (the patched sections) very sad! 

I know at one point, the house had iron half round gutters from fragments I found under the house, but right now it has/had aluminum K-style gutters installed in the 1980's by the previous owner.

Since these gutters seemed to be "bolted" in place, unable to just unscrew them, I opted to use tin snips and cut the metal brackets holding them onto the roof. I believe it's called the "spike and barrel" system, which nobody uses anymore. If I am wrong please feel free to correct me in the comments section :)

We do plan to repair/replace the molding as soon as I can find a bead and cove router blade of appropriate shape/size, which so far is proving difficult.

Now, for everyone's favourite part, the pics!

Damaged sections, some patched with aluminum, the newest chew hole, I patched in a pinch with a piece of siding.

Once again, the beautiful bead and cove molding is visible as it was intended to be!

The constant moisture from these improperly installed gutters wore the paint almost all the way down and caused moisture buildup and mildew on the wood.

In one section on the east side, it even allowed moss to grow on the wood!

Bye bye, gutter monsters

Eww filth!

  

Failing paint caused by the constant moisture.

Of sagging eaves and rot

We always had this one spot on the eaves on the NE corner of the master bedroom's bay windows that had a sag in it, there are other sag points also but not as bad as this one, and water and ice always accumulated in this spot, I always feared a problem in that spot, and so I removed the siding from that spot, only to discover rot!

it may not look that bad in that photo, the beadboard is all puffed out and the rot extends quite a bit of the way...
and not to mention all the rotted wood bits that rained down on me when I removed those panels of siding.

Thankfully the other immediate parts of this area seem to be fine, except for where the water trickled along the grooves of the beadboard and caused the paint to fail (this is on the north side I might add)

Note in the following picture that there are 2 layers of paint, one from 1900 and the other from 1923. The house was always painted white to my knowledge and the Victorian white paint was more of an off-white color it would seem than the newer white?! I'm no expert on old paint and colors, perhaps someone who knows more about this could chime in. However I found it intriguing to say the least. 

Being the perfectionist and the purist that I am for restoration, the damaged section will be replaced with new wood beadboard just like the original.

And when I had removed the bit of siding, the wood was sopping wet, however once it was removed the wood dried almost immediately! And through several torrential downpours, this section which always had a knack for attracting water suddenly was no longer a hotspot for water!!

Such a shame this wonderful old growth beadboard was destroyed by 30 years of rot thanks to siding!!