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Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Gutter talk

Warning: The following post deals with our renovations.

If – for some unknown reason - this doesn’t interest you, please feel free to skip the remainder of this post – as long as you don’t get scared off completely. Now that our שיפוצים (renovations) are more or less finished, I rarely – if ever – post about this topic, but recent developments have forced me to make an exception.

However, for those of you who are debating whether it’s worth reading to the end instead of clicking away immediately, I have two words: Roof. Views. (Yeah, I thought that might get your attention…)

And on that note:

When the roof was being installed, we wondered if we would want a gutter (i.e. מרזב - marzev - for the Hebraically-oriented among you). But after consulting with both the roofer and the kablan, we decided that it made sense to wait until it rained to see if a gutter or drainpipe was really necessary.

Fast forward to the recent rain, when we discovered that we DID, indeed, want a gutter. The problem was that no one could enter or exit the front door without passing through a sheet of water.

So, we contacted the roofer, who came yesterday and did his thing.

And now, without further ado, here’s the promised roof view:

IMG_3759

And how about one more, for good measure:

IMG_3758

Okay, I admit that perhaps these weren’t quite as exciting as old-fashioned roof views – after all, I didn’t even bother to cue the roof view theme music – but let me remind you that you can always get your authentic roof view fix by clicking on the “Roof” label to the right.

That’s it for now.

We now return you back to your regularly scheduled construction-less blog…

6 comments:

  1. It looks like an elegant shelf! Enjoy, and I hope it does the trick. They don't make metal gutters? We had a whole gutter truck put new gutters on our house when we had construction. I'm surprised they use wood.

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  2. Actually, the gutter IS made out of metal. It's just the same color as the wood. (The wood is the underside of the roof. I forget the technical name.) If you look carefully at the picture, you can see where the gutter ends and where the wood starts.

    BTW, I like your pictures of Raritan Avenue!

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  3. Awesome gutter pics! (Does that mean my mind is in the gutter?)

    Aren't you concerned about the cost of upkeep of the wood "argaz ruach"?

    I would think the wood needs to be routinely treated to keep it from getting sun dried or rotting.

    Neighbors of ours just replaced theirs with aluminum argazei ruach.

    cool word verification: nobilize

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  4. Does that mean my mind is in the gutter?
    :-)

    Aren't you concerned about the cost of upkeep of the wood "argaz ruach"?
    Good question.
    According to the Our Shiputzim technical department (aka YZG or "Mr. S."):
    "The upkeep issues are generally with the parts of the argaz ruach that are exposed to the sun - not the underneath parts. When we originally planned the roof, we asked the kablan to make sure that none of the wood was exposed to the sun. For various reasons, that didn’t happen, and although you can’t see it in this post, there are some parts that are exposed. The kablan, who lives down the block from us, promised that every few years he would get us a worker to re-stain the wood – at a very cheap rate."

    On a related note, I sent you an email.

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  5. And I hope it waters a water-hungry tree. What I don't understand is how your contractors/experts thought it wouldn't be necessary.

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  6. What I don't understand is how your contractors/experts thought it wouldn't be necessary.
    Actually, everyone was pretty sure that we would eventually need a gutter. But since there was a [very small] chance that we could get away without one, we decided to hold off on the expense until it became strictly necessary.

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