Instead, seamless rain gutters made of aluminum are your most durable option. They are also the option that is the least prone to leaking.

That doesn’t mean you can’t do anything at all with vinyl gutters. One of our readers found this blog post detailing how one mom used vinyl gutters to make a set of bookshelves for her son’s room. It’s also the source where we got the picture of the vinyl gutter bookshelves shown in this post.

It turns out this strategy is about far more than DIY decoration. Rain gutter bookshelves make the books themselves more inviting to young kids.

Instead of placing the books in an imposing bookshelf with only the spines showing you can actually place them into an attractive display that is appealing to your kids. The idea is that you “sell” the books to your kids this way, not for money like the bookstores do, but in order to encourage them to read.

This theory has apparently been tested and it works in classrooms too. You can read about it in this article titled, The Rain Gutter Literacy Revolution. Don’t count on your child’s school to do this for you, though: just do it yourself in your own home.

Don’t try to do this project with old gutters, however. This isn’t recycling advice. Old vinyl gutters are typically pretty nasty: dirt streaked, water stained, and beyond rehabilitation.

Gutter bookshelves are probably the only project we can think of where we’d encourage you to go down to the hardware store to purchase brand new vinyl gutters. After all, your gutter bookshelves won’t have to handle water, wind, rain, and rogue tree limbs in order to be successful.

Now, if you actually want gutters that are meant to serve the purposes that gutters serve, then call us for a free estimate. We’ve helped homeowners in Homosassa, Beverley Hills, and the rest of the Tampa Bay Area protect their homes from storms and heavy rains, and we’ll be happy to help you too!