Because our design includes a “skirt” or flare from the second story to the first, it is impractical to run downspouts down the side of the house on some places as they will have to divert around the flare; it just looks like an afterthought when downspouts do that.  For example, here is one of the downspouts going into the side of the building that would otherwise have to divert around the skirt just below.

And here is our neighbors house that shows a gutter going over an exterior architectural feature.

And here is an example I found on Google Images.

The one on our neighbors house is just a slight jog around a small detail, and the other example is pretty small too.  Ours would be quite a jog as our flare sticks out about a foot.

Instead, we’ve run the gutters into the walls in six places, which then comes out below the flare into cow’s tongue or a leader head.  What are these things you may wonder.

A leader head is an architectural detail that hides the junction where the downspout goes into or comes out of the house.  In our case, we didn’t like any of the designs that were available, or they were too big or too small, so we made our own; they turned out really nice.

The cows tongue just provides a more attractive way for a stream of water to come out of the wall.  Here is the cow’s tongue on our front porch.

Stuff like this is why I spend about half my time at the house.  There are probably a thousand such small details that have to be decided.  Another example above is the back block for the cows tongue.  We decided to embed a back block for just about everything that comes out of the siding – electrical outlets, switches, lights, and hose bibs.  It just gives it a more finished look.

The details tend to make the house look well put together, which is why we spend so much time thinking about the details.