John Highstreet's Carpentry

Restoration: preserving the integrity of what is in dire need of replacement - thus begins the journey into a soffit, fascia and crown repair of a gabled end on a house in Kennebunk, Maine. But first, let's meet the dog...

Duchess, all 90 lbs of hugs and kisses is about 6 feet tall when standing, super cute and VERY friendly..

 
First day of work entailed driving through a blizzard. There were about 10 of these accidents on the way, harbinger of things to come? Naw, just a typical day in Maine.

 

Included, as usual, are a few pictures of what the soffit, crown and fascia looked like before...

Cobbled together and held in place by caulking. Years of water dripping into the structure had caused extensive rot.

Damaged roofing shingles and terrible patching jobs had let water into the soffit, not only destroying the trim, but causing a lot of damage to the sheathing as well.

  The photo above demonstrates what the interior framing/blocking looked like- scrap pieces nailed or screwed with inappropriate fasteners, soaked and frozen. The good news was that the trim came off pretty easy, the framing materials, not so much.

The sheathing had water rot affecting 70% of the gabled run, so I constructed pressure treated soffit framing boxes with an ice and water shield membrane covering the top, I put these up in sections as each 8 foot box weighed about 60 pounds, and going up a 40 foot ladder, holding it with one hand and attaching with another was a pain in the neck, no really, my neck hurt..  The other picture is me posing shamelessly - I even look like it is a candid shot, though I'm taking it...

 I used copious amounts of wood hardener on the existing sub-fascia to keep it stable enough and prevent further rot.  The hard part of jobs like this is the concept of where to draw the line on replacement. Technically there is an argument for replacing the entire side of the house, but then one must consider budget as a motivating factor. Middle picture is the structure to hold the new trim, and on the right is me milling out new trim to match what was on the house back in the 1800's - a balmy day it was...

 Here is the finished (no caulking and only primed) right gabled end. The roof sheathing will be replaced this summer and will be re-shingled. I had to adjust the height of the framing, trim and drip-edge to accommodate the new height and slope of the new roof. A lot of math and head scratching at 42 feet in the air.

The other side of the gable had decent sheathing, but the trim was equally bad, so I fastened pressure treated 2x6 blocking - ensuring that the blocks would follow the same plane as the blocking on the other side as well as being square, plumb and level. Each block has five 4 1/2" ceramic plated screws bolted through the sheathing and into the framing beams.

 When all is said and done, the purpose is to recreate the aesthetic, build it structurally sound and finish as close to budget as possible.  Always a challenge, but the reward is incredible.