As to the contruction of the planters, I bought those perracing pavers at Home Depot (both the larger and new smallewr sizes). They are made to be stacked for projects such as this. Each one has a lip edge that you slide in place over the next one. When the soil is backfilled, it keeps it all in place. You have to make sure you keep them level, especially critical on the first row. Plus you have to put a row inground or partially inground, depending on how high you are going. The roses were sitting here in pots so I wasted no time in planting them. That very first smallest planter has my MARGO KOSTER polyantha and the second has my WING DING polyantha with the tiny band of EYE PAINT in back of it. Those two polyanthas I bought locally. Then I had HAPPY CHAPPY, WILL-O-THE-WISP and CARPET OF COLOR, so I put all three in the last one. Too many for the size of the planter, will be needing to move the middle one (WILL-O-THE-WISP) probably. But I had them all dug up from the working and had to do something. To move roses, water, water, water the day before so that the root ball is moist and dig up. If its hot or the rose is very large, it will drop all its leaves (just keep on watering) but after awhile it will grow new ones.

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.

...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. Uploaded with ImageShack.us Uploaded with ImageShack.us [IMG]http://img64.imageshack.us/img64/2954/p1010100z.th.jpg[/IMG]

The house never had very old and very dilapidated galvanized steel. We are fine with using galvanized steel. We have the gutters we took down--they have a long (4-5"?) spike that goes into your fascia and then cradles the gutter with some braided wire on top. The fascia is so beveled and thick and sloped backwards towards the house--not a flat surface anywhere. Plus, it's painted an old house super dark green that no one has in gutter color, so I was leaning towards this antique brown finish that looks like copper after it's aged a bit. Have a couple of leads I'm working right now and will keep you all posted about what I find! You're right about not calling gutter companies. What a waste of time that has been. It has to be historic home roofers. Even though we don't have a slate roof, these seem to be the people that know half round gutters the best. Also found out that my neighbor four doors down did galvanized half round installation himself, so I may bribe him to come over and help us.