Someone Has Taken Sales Too Far

I have learned more about gutters and leaf guard systems in the past week then I ever cared to know ... ever ... in my entire life. 

Once again, I wish that were a joke.

You may recall in my prior post The Circle of Home Repair that I cannot repair my garage door because in order to actually "fix it" I need to fix a lot of other things first, starting with regrading my back yard.

After waiting for nearly two years, I am proud to say that the bureacracy in the way of allowing us to pump all our excess water into the nearest public drainage ditch have been satisfied.  The landscaping company took only about 10 hours of labor to actually do the work.  I waited almost three years for ten hours of work. 

But, the good news is that we are officially one step closer to getting our garage door.  Now we just have to get the gutters repaired and the sofitting replaced ....which is why I have been sitting at my kitchen table, listening to contractors and salesmen expound the virtues of various gutters and leaf/debris protection products.

(Please, lord, make them stop.) 

I know that a good salesman can sell anything, but please, people ... it's a gutter.  It should not cost more than my car.  Leaf guard technology is a necessity in this house, but, no, I will not pay a few extra thousand dollars for the special "wind blow" technology that guarantees I will never have to climb a ladder to scrape away a leaf pile sitting on top of my debris protection system.

I am not afraid of ladders.  (I am afraid of heights, but we can pretend that ladders have nothing to do with heights, right?)

All this leafy talk reminds me (sadly) of the time I had to sit and listen to all those basement people talk about how to waterproof my basement.  Now, forcing both spouses to sit at a table and look at dreadful pictures of destroyed basements and talk about steel rebar is just wrong, wrong, wrong.  But, let's face it, if the basement goes (and with enough water over enough time, it eventually will go) so goes the house.  At least with basements, the salesmen know they have an element of fear to exploit.  Plus, if you spend enough hours bailing out your sump pump in the middle of a hurricane, you will do most anything to make it stop.  (I'm not even going to deny that I know this is true.)  (But, I will admit that the company that tried to sell me a waterproofing system on the grounds that Colin Powell liked them and bought it was less than persuasive.  No offense to the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, but how do I know what he knows about basements?)

But gutter guards?  Really, where is the fear factor with these?  We are all well aware that having the gutters dangling from our house and swaying in the breeze is really not good for anyone.  We know we have to do something.  What I don't know is why I have to sit here and flip pages in some salesman's book to examine each and every award and listen to him try to explain why the lifetime warranty is worth more than the gross national product of some small countries.  These are gutters.  They take water away from my house, into a little pipe that now (at long last) runs into a public drainage ditch.  If big chunks of debris get in them, it will be bad.  Still, I see no reason to have a self-ventilating, hypoallergenic system in custom-made colors.  Heck, I'd hang my own new gutters if it didn't mean I had to climb on the roof or buy a specially made ladder that lets me hang something right where my ladder wants to lean.

Thankfully, not all gutter installers think that cadillacs belong under the eaves.  Thankfully, there are still sensible contractors in this world ... who, by the way, will also install garage doors.  (Whew)