a historic preservation approach to guttering...

Photo: Alpine Rain Gutters

Jayhawk Guttering visited today and did a fabulous job installing our new copper-metallic flake gutters and round downspouts. I thought it would be a great time to talk a little about gutters, downspouts and historic preservation...

Some houses were built to not have gutters... but here in the Midwest, with our wet Springs, that would not be advisable. Your foundation and landscaping would not be happy.

There are 2 styles of gutters. K-Style and Half-Round. A K-Style gutter is what is most used. It is the angular style of gutter meant to be flatly mounted to fascia boards. Flat mounting if the key here. Most applications use 5 inch, but for a large roof a 6 might be used. (We used 6 inch.) Half-round gutters are, well, gutters that look like a tube cut in half. They are meant to be used in situations where there is no flat fascia board for mounting. The gutter would hang free of the roof and trim, by a bracket.

Photo: Benchmark Roofs (K-Style Gutter & Rectangle Downspout)

Some houses had built-in gutters - and actually a few of the old Spurgeon houses around here still have the built-in gutters. They work well if the owners keep them properly maintained and free of debris.

Photo: Gutter Supply (Halfround gutter and round downspout)

I should mention that if you were going totally old school, you could have wood gutters installed... but man, that would be expensive!

Now downspouts. There are 2 kinds - rectangular and round. K-Style gutters usually have rectangular gutters, and half-round and built-in gutters usually have round downspouts.

At the Cottage of Stone, I fudged a bit on this. We originally priced half-round gutters, and it would have doubled the cost of materials. And really, our house would have most likely had built-ins that were changed to K-Style with the 1940s remodeling. So we went with some upgraded K-style gutters but chose round downspouts. We thought it gave it a little more curb appeal and looked more in keeping with what we are going for. Since this is not a preservation or restoration but a renovation, I take a little creative liberty. (As we will when it comes time to re-roof!)

Cottage of Stone - Copper-Metallic K-Style Gutters

Cottage of Stone - Round Downspouts