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Over the past month or so I've had an ongoing project to remove and replace the rain gutters on our house, and get the house trim repainted.
I removed the old rain gutters myself over the course of a couple weekends. Knowing my back it not really up to the task, I contracted the painting and the new gutters. The painters washed, scraped, patched, primed and painted the trim last Saturday and Sunday. They did a great job. It was done by two guys who work during the week as painting inspectors for the LA Unified School District...they have a contractor's license and they do house painting on the weekends for extra money. They know what a quality job looks like, and how to achieve it.
The gutter company started what should have been a one-day job last Thursday. They sent out a relatively new guy, and on the first day, a totally inexperienced "helper". They got the gutter up Thursday, and were supposed to finish things up Friday. Well, Friday came and went, and the new guy (with no helper this time) spent all day caulking corners (the gutter itself is seamless), and driving additional hanger spikes. Then he spent all day Saturday installing four downspouts. This guy was beyond slow. It took him about an hour and a half just to install the 90º elbows at the bottoms of four downspouts. (I could have done it in 20 minutes and still had time for a cigarette afterwards.) Anyway, after he left Saturday late afternoon, I decided to see how things drained, so I went up on the roof with a garden hose. It became obvious real quickly that there was no attention whatsoever paid to the slope of the gutters. Things slope away from the downspouts. Water runs over the edge of the gutter before it even gets to the downspouts. Every corner leaks, despite being "sealed" with silicone caulk. There are numerous marks where he missed the hanger spikes and instead banged the face of the gutter with his hammer. And some of the holes where the spikes penetrate the rim of the gutter are wallowed out big enough to fit two spikes. Very sloppy, amateur work. (The guy was real nice, and a good woodworker. He even showed me pics of some of his woodworking, and he knows what he's doing in a wood shop. Unfortunately, he didn't have a clue about hanging rain gutters.)
Today, the owner of the company came by to do a few finishing touch-ups. When she called to say she was coming over, I told her there were some problems, so she showed up with her husband, the lead installer. They both readily agreed with my evaluation of the problems, and the end result is that they will be replacing nearly half of the gutters, and re-hanging most of the rest. So, on the plus side, they are going to fix the problems, and eat their losses. On the minus side, I'll again have to work my schedule around them coming back out to fix things. Also, there are now going to be a bunch of new holes in my freshly-painted facia that will need to be caulked before the new gutter goes up. (So I need to be here to ensure they do get patched.)
No much I can do at this point but wait for them to get it done, and I'm confident they'll eventually get it right, but it's aggravating nonetheless.
/rant
I removed the old rain gutters myself over the course of a couple weekends. Knowing my back it not really up to the task, I contracted the painting and the new gutters. The painters washed, scraped, patched, primed and painted the trim last Saturday and Sunday. They did a great job. It was done by two guys who work during the week as painting inspectors for the LA Unified School District...they have a contractor's license and they do house painting on the weekends for extra money. They know what a quality job looks like, and how to achieve it.
The gutter company started what should have been a one-day job last Thursday. They sent out a relatively new guy, and on the first day, a totally inexperienced "helper". They got the gutter up Thursday, and were supposed to finish things up Friday. Well, Friday came and went, and the new guy (with no helper this time) spent all day caulking corners (the gutter itself is seamless), and driving additional hanger spikes. Then he spent all day Saturday installing four downspouts. This guy was beyond slow. It took him about an hour and a half just to install the 90º elbows at the bottoms of four downspouts. (I could have done it in 20 minutes and still had time for a cigarette afterwards.) Anyway, after he left Saturday late afternoon, I decided to see how things drained, so I went up on the roof with a garden hose. It became obvious real quickly that there was no attention whatsoever paid to the slope of the gutters. Things slope away from the downspouts. Water runs over the edge of the gutter before it even gets to the downspouts. Every corner leaks, despite being "sealed" with silicone caulk. There are numerous marks where he missed the hanger spikes and instead banged the face of the gutter with his hammer. And some of the holes where the spikes penetrate the rim of the gutter are wallowed out big enough to fit two spikes. Very sloppy, amateur work. (The guy was real nice, and a good woodworker. He even showed me pics of some of his woodworking, and he knows what he's doing in a wood shop. Unfortunately, he didn't have a clue about hanging rain gutters.)
Today, the owner of the company came by to do a few finishing touch-ups. When she called to say she was coming over, I told her there were some problems, so she showed up with her husband, the lead installer. They both readily agreed with my evaluation of the problems, and the end result is that they will be replacing nearly half of the gutters, and re-hanging most of the rest. So, on the plus side, they are going to fix the problems, and eat their losses. On the minus side, I'll again have to work my schedule around them coming back out to fix things. Also, there are now going to be a bunch of new holes in my freshly-painted facia that will need to be caulked before the new gutter goes up. (So I need to be here to ensure they do get patched.)
No much I can do at this point but wait for them to get it done, and I'm confident they'll eventually get it right, but it's aggravating nonetheless.
/rant