Jeff came up with an ingenious way to approach repairing the box gutters. He remembered what his dad taught him about repairing ships (his dad was a ship captain), and thought of fiberglass, which comes in a fabric roll that can be cut to size, layed in the gutter and coated with a resin. Well, being a quilter - when you say fabric, I know what to do! So my part of box gutter repair was cutting the fabric stirps to size and rolling them up, ready for Jeff to lay in the metal gutter liner.
Box gutters consist of the actual formed tin liner, and the outside facia boards, with various decorative trims applied. Once Jeff was on the ladder he removed the aluminum trim which completely concealed all the wood rot and damage. In many places there is not much left of the facia boards and trim. Jeff will need to replace and rebuild these all the way around the house. An interesting detail is that under the gutter is a piece of beadboard trim, of which he plans to duplicate when the wood repair stage begins.
The first side to test the fiberglass liner repair on was the right side of the house, next to the middle upstairs window. You can see how the water over many years deteriorated the wall and the lath and plaster. So we used this handy kitty litter bucket was shoved in the wall to catch the rain pouring in here. The first rain came since the repair, and,,,, dun dun, dun,,,, Yep, not as much rain but there is still some in the bucket. So, back up on the ladder the next weekend during a rainy day to watch the water pour down the roof and through the back behind the gutter. His fiberglass was working great, but not he needed to bend a metal drip edge to put between the slate shingles and gutters.
Fast forward to our nest rain, and - yah! no water in the bucket even though we had a good Virginia down pour, So one tiny area of water fixed and the system developed for repairing the culprit to all this damage in the house.
Three weeks into our renovation and we are still only on the discovery stage of our journey. I wonder what will be around the corner next?