All I wanted was new gutters...

I'm really preferring older houses/neighborhoods these days.

Old houses rock, regardless of the work involved. My backyard and neighbors yards make it look like I live in a forest. You're not going to get that these days with new construction. They just bulldoze everything. DFW may not have mountains, but the right neighborhood can still get you close to nature.

[black2002ls]

I got a quote from a local off duty fireman, and so far he is almost twice of my lowest bid :/

[Z06killinsbf]

Good looking house btw

[Sgt Beavis]

My gutter guy is also an off duty fireman..

[fordracing19]

Do you have a gutter guy? I have an off duty fireman that did ours for a really good price.

[Sean88gt]

I'm really preferring older houses/neighborhoods these days.

[black2002ls]

Who is doing the gutters? Are you getting a good price?

[8mpg]

That sucks.. I feel you though. I just wanted to fix some trim and it ended up costing me $6500 for all new siding, soffit and fascia

[Sgt Beavis]

I bought this house a couple of years ago knowing that it needed new gutters. They were a mess. So this summer I finally got around to getting to work on that job. The gutter guy pointed out to me that I had no fascia boards anywhere on the edges of my roof except the front porch. This is due to the builder being a cheap bastid.

So I went ahead and pulled the gutters off, ordered some Hardiplank and got a buddy to agree to give me a hand..




So last week we start pulling the fascia boards off the front porch. Everything went down hill from there. The header and the front was rotted at the corner pictured below. The joist at this end was also rotted and termite infested.



Nothing can ever be simple, right? So I pulled some of the porch ceiling panels and braced the porch so it wouldn't collapse.





The next morning, after a lot of work, we got the joist cut out and removed half of the header. The header is two 2x8 boards, but the inner board was undamaged. The termite infiltration must have been rather recent because there was no sign of damage anywhere else but that one joist (lucky)... I sprayed everything down with Termidore to be certain. I then replaced the damaged boards. I also replaced all of the flashing around the area. I think the flashing was rather limited, and improperly done. Last weeks rain gave the house a good drenching. I was able to check out my handiwork and found everything to be dry as a bone..



Now, almost a week later, I have finally closed up the porch ceiling and gotten back to installing the hardiplank. What a real PITA this job was. However I should count myself fortunate. That termite damage could have been a lot worse and who knows what would have happened. Next up is to finish the hardiplank installation, replace some trim I tore out during repairs, paint, and get my gutter guy out there to finish the job.

One silver lining, I bought pre-treated boards for all my temporary bracing. I'll repurpose that for building a new deck. With labor and materials, I'm out about $500. I paid my buddy $10 and hour for the help. Thank God he turned out to be one hard working redneck..