The Tara North 20oz Copper Gutters & 7 Custom Scuppers Project
South East Portland, Oregon (9-10/08)

Before & After Pics

Updated 11-7-2008

Company
Profile
Aluminum
Gutters
Copper
Gutters
Custom
Work
Award &
Referrals
Personal
Ethics

Our Contact
Information

Go to our 'Price Page' for our current cost for our copper and aluminum gutters
Remember you can click on each pictures below for a better view

.

I was asked to work on this house restoration by the new owner, who requested I keep his personal information off this web site. If you are requesting a bid you can inquire on this address to see it in person. He found me doing a search for this web site and first contacted me in December of 2007 to get a bid for copper gutter. A set of white aluminum gutters had been installed before over rotten wood that was pulling loose of the house and looked bad. After presenting him with my formal quote for just over $15k he disclosed to me how the other gutter contractor had wanted $29k, so my bid was around half as much, and he will get even better quality as well.

He reports having 6 kitchenettes removed from inside this old boarding house that was originally built by a wealthy lumber baron. This is the most amazing house renovation I have seen. He told me a Postal worker had lived in a very small basement room without any windows for the last 25 years. He paid $28k just to have the paint stripped. This team of workers had done well spending 6 weeks to strip off all the paint before the exterior wood work was restored and the house could be painted. Very tedious work to say the least.

Fortunately they had lots of dry weather this Summer to get this work done to get the house primed and painted in this subtle 2 tone look before winter set in. He had  a lot of difficulty getting the plan approved to remove this poorly constructed addition over this back daylight annex, but he had not given up. I don't think I have ever seen a client go to this extent to restore a classic house. I was very impressed and inspired to go over any details I could think of with him to make sure this would be my crowning glory as well. Thomas has been very good to work with and quite friendly.

 

These dormer gutters were the first to go on, working my way from the top to bottom, some times hanging by a rope walking on this recycled rubber roofing that looks like tile.

This house is beginning to look quite magnificent with the paint job nearly finished.

Here is some of the detailed work he had to find special craftsmen to do to restore this house. Each spindle of this exterior porch railing had to be recreated with new wood, since the old ones were too rotten to patch and fix. The base of these huge columns had to be rebuilt as well. I am blown away at his perseverance to have this done so well.

This client liked the look of an old classic scupper I had collected in 2002 from the Yocum Project, which was made by a talented craftsman long before I was born. He is the first to have me recreate it. The 17" width was a bit much when I held it up in place on the house, so he had me build slightly smaller versions just 14" wide and a little taller mid-section.  I had to multiply all the measurements by 0.823 to scale it down, while keeping the same sort of look.

These new scuppers are made with a thicker 20oz copper and also have a 20oz copper liner inside to take the abrasion of running water over the next century, so this is at least 3 times the copper thickness of the old scupper that had worn holes through the side. These new scuppers may not be as pretty at close inspection as the old scupper with the overlapping seams and rivets holding them together, but they are a lot stronger.

This photo above shows a set of 4 of the 7 scuppers made for this house and 3 of the 5 super outlets I needed to make before I could install the main house gutters as you will see below. To see more photos of the scupper fabrication go to: http://copper-by-design.com/cw/sf3.htm

Here is a few close-upshots of the scuppers mounted on the house.

These show the 10" wide super outlets mounted on the fascia board under the split in the middle of the 41' copper gutters. The split is to allow for the expansion and contraction of the copper that will be different than the wood structure. This expansion joint help relieve the tension off the sealed wrap around corners, so they are much less likely to get pulled apart and leak.

 

The back balcony has a curved design as you see here and I needed to cut 20 pieces of copper gutter 9" long to form this curve for both sides connecting the side and end gutters together. There are 15 rivets holding each seam together. That's over 300 copper rivets just in that part of this project. In all there were over 2,000 rivets used for these gutters and scuppers.

I normally mount 1 pipe cleat per 6' of downspout, but since he was worried about would-be thieves stealing his downspouts I decided to use 1 bracket for each 4'. I also added more rivets they attach with; from 6 to 8. To top that off for the first time I used 6 stainless steel screws to attach each pipe cleat bracket to the siding, instead of just 1 screw on each side. All in all these downspouts have over 260% more fasteners than my standard installations had been.

$19.779.75 final cost

$7,858.20 - 523.88' of 20oz copper gutters w/o removal
$1,053 - hard installation for the upper gutters
$2,419.80 - 201.65' of downspouts and elbows
$3,150 - 63 corners, custom ends, and mitered end-caps to seal
$1,270 -  13 super outlets and 5 larger no-clog outlets
$520 - 8 leaf-catchers
$3,400 - 5 classic copper scuppers on the house + 2 shorter scuppers on the garage
$108 - 54' of steel screen to cover venting above the gutters on the dormers

..
.
.

 Below is a photo of our
Better Business Bureau's
NW Business Integrity Award
for the year 1998

1999 Better Business Award

We were also a 1997 finalist for this same award. See our referral web page to see how we managed to be honored with this special award

 

Back to homepage
Homepage

Site Map

 

Company
Profile
Aluminum
Gutters
Copper
Gutters
Custom
Work
Award &
Referrals
Personal
Ethics

Our Contact
Information

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

dmr-gutters.com