Of Rot & Scaffolding

Hey Everyone!

Check it out - two posts in two days!!

Today I got a chance to do something a little more interesting than scraping paint.

Do you all remember that spot of rot on the porch fascia, right above where the flag goes? If not go here to see it - look right above the flag finial.

When we first bought the house therewere two huge Ceder trees growing at the front steps. If you don't remember go here for the post.

Anyway, what you cant see in the pictures is the spot between the tree on the left and the porch fascia. There was an invasive vine growing up that side of the tree and it decided to go for the house as well.

So the 'rot' is the damage done by this vine.

Today I worked on this spot.

At this point the rot has been cleaned away.

I took this picture so you could see how much the fascia has pushed out. The two fascia boards should be flush against the bead-board.

Do you see that alligator paint?! This is what ALL the paint on every single piece of bead-board looks like.

Just another view, but you can also see the original shake-shingles.





















This is part of the rotted fascia board that didn't disintegrate.

Do you see the 1 x 2 above the molding? Notice that it's missing on the right. This part of the trim disintegrated the moment I touched it.

Using the Fein Multimaster the rotted part of the fascia was removed.

Depending on what we do with the fascia boards will determine if the board gets cut back even further.

I drew a circle around the main fascia board, on the radius section, as well as an arrow so you can see the area that has pushed away better.

As you can see, the main board has pushed out more than an inch. I have an idea how to fix this but one of the problems is the amount of nails originally used. In a space that's about 1.5 x 2.5 inches there are about a dozen large nails. These might have weakened the board.

I should find out tomorrow.

I'm also trying out some simple scaffolding platforms to help make scraping the bead-board easier.





I think I will replace the board you see with a cut-to-fit piece of 1/2 plywood.

And of course, what would a project like this be without a huge piece of scaffolding.

The father-n-law came over to help me put this in place. Have this will help the fascia repair go easier. This morning I had to use an 8' step ladder.

I also started to test the Paint Shaver on the bead-board on the inside facing fascia.

I did this while waiting for the Father-n-law to arrive. In reality we probably wont get this part done until next year. However, this will be a good project for Fall and Spring; especially when you consider a heat gun will have to be used to get the paint out of the beading.

I'm going to leave you with the following two pics. While playing around I discovered something great.

Remember, we used the Paint Shaver on the clapboard.

We knew going in that it would leave the clapboard 'fuzzy'. You can kind of see it in the picture.

So I decided to try that 36-grit sandblaster pad, the one from the previous post, on the clapboard to see what it would do.

Isn't it sweet looking?!?!

Smooth as a baby's butt!!

Seriously, it's as smooth as the new stuff we got from the lumber yard and I barely touched it with the sander.

To be honest though, since I was just playing around, it does need to be sanded a bit better on the edges.

Well, that's about it for the day.

Till next time...

Cheers!
Larry ~