Day VII ~ swapping paintbrush for hammer

Today's project was working on the front of the house again..... this time the soffits and fascias.  In case those terms are foreign to you, the soffit is the underhang of the roof where it extends past the exterior walls of the house.  Said another way, where the roof overhangs the ends of your house, the bottom side of that overhang is the soffit.

The fascia boards are the roof trim boards the make a "band" around the roof's perimeter.  This is where the rain gutters are fastened, for example. 

I set up all the tools I thought I would need on my little worktable, so here we go.

What I've always wanted to do is to vent the soffits to create an airflow from the soffits up through the roof and then exhaust out of the side gable vents, and now is the perfect time to do it.

What I did first was take my cordless circular saw and saw a line down the inner and outer edges of the soffit, then took my reciprocating saw and connected the two saw cuts together at each end to enable me to remove this inner section.  I left a few inches of soffit wood on each side that I will utilize later. You can see the first piece removed in the picture above.  Interestingly, when I removed this first piece there was a pile of insulation in the left corner, as well as several pine cones falling out of the hole.  I know there were squirrels in the attic before I moved in, and I guess they built a nest in the corner.  I continued the process and in a few minutes had the entire section cut out.  Also found an abandoned paperwasp nest but I left it in place.  I thought maybe the sight of it would scare any other bugs away.

Speaking of bugs.... now I have this huge hole in the side of my house where anything could get in .... ants, bugs, birds, squirrels, etc.  I won't be able to get the soffit material until at least tomorrow so I used some screening that Valerie left behind (thank goodness!) to cover the hole.  I was going to do that anyway as even after the soffits go in I don't want anything to be able to crawl in there.

The hole is 8" wide so I felt a strip of screen 12" wide would be more than sufficient.  Since I wanted to do it in one piece which would be 18 ft. long, I came up with what I thought was a brilliant way to make the strip.  Instead of rolling out 18 ft of this 48" side screening and then somehow cutting off a strip 12" wide, here's what I did. 

I made sure the roll was wrapped tighly, then measured where 12" would be and wrapped a piece of duct tape around the roll at that point.  Then I used a hacksaw and simply cut the roll at that point.  When done I had a 20' roll of screening 12" wide!  Neat and sweeeeeet!.

Next I began stapling it up to cover the hole, working from left to right, making sure I folded the screening over double where I'd be stapling.  It wasn't long before the entire venting area was bugproof.  I used the same technique successfully on the other front soffit to the right of the front porch, too.

Now it was fascia time.  Oh, I forgot to tell you that the very first thing I did was to remove the gutters and scrape the existing fascia board.  I noticed that where the board meets the roof of the front porch was rotted, so it must be replaced.  Luckily there was a seam about 3ft from the rotted end of the board so that's all I'd have to replace.  I was going to replace the entire board but I'll be covering it with vinyl or aluminum fascia anyway, and the existing boards are pretty sound.

It was around 3pm but I decided it was too early to quit, so I went to Home Depot and bought a 3/4" x 5 1/2" x 8' piece of synthetic board.  I think it's called Tru Tech or something.  The Azek board is better and more expensive, but for this application the one I bought would be fine.  It cost around $19 I think.

So back at the house I set up my table saw and got to work.  It wasn't just a matter of cutting a length of board and slapping it up, because this piece had a bevel cut on top, and an angle cut to match the pitch of the porch roof that it butted up against, so I had to get those measurements first, and then cut accordingly.  This synthetic stuff cuts beautifully and I don't have to worry about it ever rotting, even if it got wet.

At this  point it was quitting time so after another half hour or so of putting stuff away I called it a day.  This was one of those jobs that took all day but it looks like you only worked for an hour or so.  Also, I got a ton of interruptions.  My neighbor from across the street walked over and was talking to me for a while, plus I got phone calls from my mother, my sister, and Diane.  Towards the end of the day another neighbor, Joe, came by to drop off a brochure on Amish built sheds and garages I was interested in, and he stayed for a while too.  I guess I've got the whole neighborhood buzzing about the sudden burst of activity at the old Skinner Johnson house!