Getting My Mind Out of the Gutter

I spent a couple of hours up on a ladder this afternoon, cleaning the gutters at my parent's house.

Normally, it doesn't take very long at all -- they had the Gutter Helmet installed a few years ago, and it usually works pretty good.

However, after I went up, I saw that there were a couple of birds' nests up in there, jamming things up. And because the opening for the water is so small, it was pretty tricky trying to pull out the nests a little bit at a time.

The front gutter downspout was jammed up pretty good, and that's the side next to the power line, so I had to be extra careful. Though I wasn't too careful to avoid dropping the cleaning stick (an old rake prong) into the gutter.

I finally unscrewed the screw holding the downspout so I could clean it out the leaves, grass, and muck clogging it up. I put the screw on the roof. Guess what happened next.

Since the rusty brown screw disappeared after falling 20 feet into the grass, we cannibalized another screw from lower down and got everything back together.

I was kind of glad to finally get off the ladder.

Tags: gutters, gutter helmet