Jar of Goodness 12.4.22: New Gutters, and Done!

. . . The weekly virtual “gratitude jar.”

This week, I’m expressing thanks for our new gutters, and for having this roofing-siding-gutter project be done!

Lawsey, it’s expensive. Fortunately, the roof and replacement gutters were covered by insurance. It was damaged by a hailstorm on March 27, 2020, with tennis-ball-sized hail. The city was still recovering from the 2019 tornado! We were sitting out on the sunporch when the hail started—there was no thunderstorm; it sounded like someone just started hitting the roof with a sledgehammer. It totaled my car; yeah, 2020 was a pretty messed-up year. Anyway . . .

We’d been wanting to put siding on our front and back dormers. With our steeply slanted roof, they’re difficult to get to, and the front dormer gets blasted by heat. The back one, facing northeast, wants to grow lichen and moss. Poor old wooden things. Here's a "before" picture, the dormer and the roof, covered with the old shingles from 2006.

So we tacked that onto our work order.

The gutters in front now have gutter guards, which hopefully will prevent leaves and twigs from getting trapped. We’ve been pretty tired of water overflowing it and spilling onto our front doorstep. The gutter guys also noticed that the old gutter on the sunporch wasn’t draining properly. A bunch of water splashed out of it when they pulled it off. No wonder we’ve had a problem with mosquitoes in our backyard, eh?

We also had the “gutter guys” add a small section of gutter to the little roof over our driveway. In 2012 when we got our new sidewalks and driveway, the slope was changed such that much of the water in the driveway must drain via a drain near our basement doors. This includes any water that hits the three-story Broadway side of our house and runs down. That’s a lot for that little drain to handle, and we sometimes get water coming into our basement. The gutter, hopefully, will help. Below, views of "before" (with new roof) and "after" (with new roof, plus new gutter).

Apart from writing a pretty breathtaking check for this (so hooray for the big deposit from the insurance company), we’re done, done-done-done with this project.

WHAT will we be thankful for next week?? Tune in and find out!