I drove by a house in my neighborhood the other night that had dark gutters and it looked amazing! The gutters were like the home's "bling"! The house was a grayish color with black and white trim and it looked like the gutters were black. Very cool look.
What about buying one piece of dark gutter downspout, laying it against your house and living with it for a week or so? That way you could actually see it before buying the whole thing. i think you can get a 10 foot piece at Lowe's or HD for less than $20. When you are done with it, you can either use it or donate it to Habitat for Humanity.

Nice job. Any "before" shots?

Only when you get to the $ 2million range here do builders start using some copper. I've been quite satisfied with copper coloured aluminum. Amazing how many people think it's the real thing.

I'd love to see the before pic as well; the after is just smashing.

I just had to replace the 90 year-old copper gutters on the house I am renovating because salvaging them would have cost millions (the copper not only had holes in it, it had become misshapen). My house is painted cypress siding, and I went with gutters to match the trim. It you could find a brown that seemed dimensional enough to pass for weathered copper at a distance, that would be great. You might also think about matching your trim.

Play with your photo in Photoshop or even Paint to try out different looks.

Sorry for the late reply to you all. I appreciate it!

Here is another photo of the house and a before renovation picture of the house.

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Here is a link that might be useful: Pre-Renovation

photo

Here is a link that might be useful: another view

Copper is at an all time high, around $4.50 a pound. If an old house is empty in a bad neighbor, it will get stripped of its copper pipes faster than you could believe. If you go copper, you may want to also get a big mean guard dog.

I don't have any advice to add, but your house is lovely!

We have an 18th century stone farmhouse and had new gutters and downspouts installed. Our contractor suggested aluminum ones that are a bronzy-brown color and that look just like aging copper. We have a copper roof over a large window and I can attest to the fact that there's not much difference in color between the two at this point. Not to mention our contractor was doing a major renovation of a multimillion dollar property that had all copper gutters and downspouts. He says the ones on that house and on ours look pretty similar.

Like I said, we went with a bronzy color. I've not seen the musket brown or royal brown you mention so I can't comment. But they don't sound like they'd be to my taste....too much brown and not enough of an aged metal effect is what it sounds like.

...back with an update. I was all set to go with the musket brown alum. gutters, but when the installers showed up the color they had was not the same as the sample. I did not have them install the gutters. For future reference if you are looking for a copper look the bronze is a much better choice. The Royal Brown and Musket Brown look like BROWN and I do not think look like copper at any stage. The bronze is ok and I would have gone with that if I did not have the copper gutters opportunity that happen to fall into my lap.

After spending a long time on gutters here is my thoughts. If you are not going with copper I would go with white K style over the white half round. I do not think there is much of a difference when everything is said and done between the half round white and K - Style white. The colored alum. is nice but like a lot of things it is what it is Alum. trying to look like copper. It just doesn't look the same.

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thankyou so much for your advice and feedback...your house looks great!

1st question - this thread was last posted on in Sept, '12 yet it's listed ahead of more recent postings. I don't think I've seen this before here. Anyone know why that would be?

Back to gutters. I don't have anything fancy like copper but I do have big old steel gutters that are in poor condition - mostly they have little holes in them. They're 1913 vintage - at least the house is. I don't know if gutters would have been original equipment.

I'm going to have to economize on the work on this house. I think I can still do a good job, I can and will do a lot of the work myself. Gutters not included - I'm suddenly too old to be working with heavy things 20+' up on a ladder.

So I have a plan. I need all the wood trim painted - eaves and rafters, for a start. Mostly there are no fascias and definitely no soffits.

My idea is this: the painters (or handymen) remove the gutters to paint. While they're down I line the bottoms with fiberglass screening and spray that with that flex something rubber spray that advertises on TV with a screen bottom boat and then paint the outsides.

Then the handymen or painters replace the gutters. (I don't know if painters do this or if my handyman service paints.)

Does this make any sense? (The rest of the house is stucco. A whole separate problem.)

I'm in Minnesota with extreme temperatures - usually reaches nearly 100 in the summer and can do -30 in the winter. Should the materials I'm thinking of shrink and expand? I just hate the idea of tossing the big, sturdy old things as much as I hate paying for new, flimsier ones.

Sorry for the size of the picture. I don't seem to have any control if it's embedded. And nature's wild landscaping has been mostly removed.

When dates are out of sequence, it's because someone posted spam to bring up an old thread. When the administrators remove the spam post, the thread still remains up at the top.

So you are just missing the spam post that bumped the thread.