Day VIII ~ Soffit TO me!!

Out  of the house by 9am, headed to Mom's house in Toms River to pick up an extension ladder.  You might be asking ..."why would your mother have an extension ladder???".  Answer is ~ how do you get most cool things?  You BORROW them and never give them back!  No, seriously, I think someone did some work for her and never came back for the ladder.  It's been two years now, so I think it's officially ours.

After coffee and donuts and some chit chat, it was off to Allied Supply to pick up the long awaited soffit stuff.  I hate going to these contractor places where everyone there is a contractor but you, and you can almost HEAR them laughing at you in their brains.  I persevered and managed to get what I thought I would need to get started.  I almost fainted when it came to around $225!  I'm probably not getting contractor pricing, that's for sure.

So I paid for the stuff, then went around to the side of the bldg where the warehouse guy took the receipt and disappeared.  About 15 minutes later he came walking out with a long 12' box on his shoulder.  I told him I'd move my truck closer for the rest of the stuff when he said "all your stuff is in this one box" and carried over and put it on my trailer.  

Back home I set up all my stuff again and began the job.  First you have to install what we in the trade call " J Channel". It's called "J channel" because ..... come on, do I have to tell you why?  Anyway, this goes against the house and the soffit slips into it.  The other outer end of the soffit gets nailed to the bottom of the fascia.  There was a slight problem though as I had to mount the J channel lower than expected, due to the 3/8" that the existing fascia board hangs down from the existing soffit. 

Luckily the old soffit material I cut away yesterday was the perfect size to use as a spacer so I ripped pieces 2" wide and nailed them up with my air stapler ... zip zip zip.

Next came mounting the J.  If you notice there are slotted nail holes.  When you nail you don't drive the nail home, but leave it slightly loose so when the vinyl expands and contracts, it will slide in the slot under the nail.   I used nails for the first 3 holes or so, but was getting nowhere.  The nails were 3/4" roofing nails, and they did not go into the wood easily.  The nails were so short that I had to hold them with my needlenose pliers! 

I know when to quit, so I used screws instead, driving them in with my cordless drill.  Worked like a charm.

Next was actually cutting the 12ft soffit strips into 16 3/8" pieces.  To do this I mounted a fine toothed plywood blade backwards in my circular saw and made the first cut...... like butta!  The only problem was that it cut SO easily that it was tough to keep a straight line.  So after figuring out how I wanted the beginning piece to look on the "open side", I mounted the first piece.

After that it was cut a piece, mount it, cut a piece, mount it..... for a while.  Brilliant idea department:  I switched gears and used my table saw, but fed the pieces into the sawblade backwards.  By doing this I really sped up the process.  I would cut three pieces, then mount three pieces, etc.  The last piece where it meets the porch roof fit exactly.  What are de odds of dat?  And so, with the sun beginning to set, the soffit in the first section was done!

Now, the average person would have quit for the day, but not ME!  There was still a speck of daylight left, so I tackled installing the fascia.  I first installed what we PROs call "undersill trim", which is basically a piece of vinyl folded against itself so that you can slip the top of the fascia trim into it.... makes a nice finished edge.  It also helped me when I was trying to mount this 12ft piece of aluminum.

Anyway, there was a tricky cut that had to be done on the left side, but I had done it on a practice piece already, so I transfered the measurements to a new piece of fascia and it fit "like a glove".  Slapped up this first piece and THEN I quit for the night.  In fact, I had to take the last picture with a flash as it was getting so dark out.  Gee, haven't worked this hard since my Key West gig.



One thing about aluminum or vinyl.  It will hide a multitude of sins.  I've seen the biggest piece of crap houses resided and retrimmed, and they look fabulous, but what's underneath would curl your hair.  Not so here, though, in my own defense.  Speaking of Key West and the sun setting, I leave you with one of my favorite pictures, taken at a top secret spot somewhere in the "Lower Keys".  Enjoy.