Balcony Gutter Re-Installed, Partially

One of the phases of the renovation project dealt with replacing the flooring of the exposed upstairs balcony over the front porch. While on most other elements of this project, my general contractor Peter LaRoque was diligent about integrating all the relevant and related aspects into whatever he was working on. But for some reason, he refused to arrange to have the LeafGuard gutter reattached after his crew completed their work on that balcony, and it has been a sticking point for us ever since.

Without that gutter being reattached, I've had two years of run-off from that balcony, which has led to peeling paint on the fascia boards above and below, as well as bubbling and eventual peeling of the new paint on the porch. It also made it extra icy in the wintertime. Here are two pictures from February 2010 that show the dripping and bubbling of the paint.

Now, in May 2011, the paint is coming off like gangbusters:

My last exchange with Pete about this went something like this:

Me: Pete, the paint is peeling up on the porch.
Pete: That's because you haven't reinstalled the gutter around the balcony.
Me: I wish you had done that when you completed the balcony.
Pete: I told you you would have to arrange for that.
   PAUSE
Me, with feeling: I wish you had done that when you completed the balcony.

There's an additional hitch that he and I are going to have to find some way to work out: the way he attached that rubber roof, it allows a significant amount of water to catch and pool at the front edge, just above the front porch steps. I expect that to have a deleterious effect on the integrity of the rubber roof there, over time, and I also expect it to hasten the rot of the porch railing supports that sit in that lingering water.

Now, I think I have a guess as to why he didn't want to oversee the reattachment of the removed section of gutter himself: it looks like the way he attached the rubber roofing cover to the fascia board is going to make it very hard to re-gutter around the balcony. That's the determination of LeafGuard of Asheville, the outfit that did the original installation of the LeafGuard gutters before I bought the house.

They came here at the beginning of the week (I was off working in New Orleans) and reinstalled the missing gutter portion. But after the rains on Tuesday, I found that there was still a drip on the steps of the front porch. When I looked at how they'd reinstalled the gutters, I saw that there was as much as a half-inch gap between the fascia board and the back of the gutter. Which means they do not really work as gutters.

So it's one step closer to have the gutter back up on the house instead of leaning against the side of it. But I've got to get Pete and LeafGuard together so they can resolve how to get the gutters and his rubber roof to work together. Right now, I'm caught in the middle.