Monday was very busy.
It promises to rain tomorrow, so I put up the new gutter on the back of the house this afternoon.
I had wanted to start this morning, especially as the folks let me use one of their vans to transport the gutters and downspout and other items needed for assembly. The gutters and downspout are ten feet long, and would not fit in my car, hence the need for a van. Even then, the gutters fit in the van only just.
I could not start the project until noon because I spent all morning trying to get the folks’ damnable new router (a) to communicate with the Internet at all, and (b) to communicate with the wireless printer. I could not do the latter, so it had to be put to the side until I can make time for it later this week.
I gathered the following parts for the project from Lowe’s in Marion:
| gutter | 3, 10 ft | catches water from roof and channels it to drop outlet |
| downspout | 1, 10 ft | catches water from gutter and channels it to ground |
| drop outlet | 1 | catches water from gutter into downspout |
| slip joint | 2 | connects two gutters together |
| outside cap | 1 | caps open end of gutter |
| inside cap | 1 | caps open end of drop outlet |
| bracket | 13 | screwed to fascia, supports gutter |
| elbow joint | 1 | diverts downspout water away from house |
| connector | 1 | connects downspout to elbow joint |
| downspout bracket | 1 | clamps downspout to wall of house |
| wood screw | 25 | secures brackets, slip joints and drop outlets to fascia |
Just like in any other project, things go wrong.
In the end the gutter came out more or less the way I wanted it. The only exception was with a middle slip joint, which was lower than the rest of the gutter. Not wanting a repeat of the original metal gutter, I rescrewed the joint a quarter inch higher. It rose the gutter, but not all that much. I got a shim from the folks and used that to push the joint up until it was level with the rest of the gutter.
The test of the new gutter will come on Wednesday, when it is supposed to rain.
The gutter project made me fifteen minutes late for the monthly meeting of the Friends of the Fairmount Public Library.
As I wrote in a past entry, Isis had to be put to sleep because she had lost all control of the back of her body.
This loss of control meant that I have had to clean the carpet in my bedroom, where Isis spent almost all of the time during her final days. I borrowed a carpet cleaner from the folks, figured out how to fill it up and work it, and cleaned the carpet in the afternoon after moving all the bedroom furniture to the living room.
I also cleaned all the cat’s stuff — food and water bowls, cat box, and carrier — and put those away for the next cat I will probably get.
I talked with my new neighbor next door. He is the brother of my former neighbor the carpenter; both of them grew up in that house. I had thought that the carpenter’s wife and kid would live there until July; that was what she told me. But evidently the plan has changed: Wife and son will live in a rental until the son finishes school, then move to Kansas to be with the carpenter.
The carpet in my bedroom was still wet four hours after the shampooing. It is dry enough to allow me to reassemble my bed. The other furniture can wait until tomorrow.