Mobile Fascia And Soffit

Vinyl Soffit

Vinyl is what most of Mobile ends up with, and for good reason. It doesn't rot, it never needs painting, and it laughs off the humidity that turns bare wood punky in three summers. Panels come vented and solid, and the mix matters: your attic wants roughly one square foot of free vent area per 150 square feet of ceiling, so we run vented vinyl soffit along the eaves and solid under porch ceilings that don't need the airflow.

Where it goes wrong is the fastening. A panel run moves close to a quarter inch between a January morning and an August afternoon, so nailed tight it buckles and waves at the neighbors.

We hang vinyl soffits with a hair of play, and if the color has to match a Mobile Siding Installation we did, we order it that way.

Roofing Fascia

Roofing fascia is the board your roof edge actually lands on, and it does more work than it gets credit for. Behind it sit the rafter tails and, on a lot of houses here, a sub-fascia that nobody looks at until the day it gives. The drip edge has to lap over the top of that board so water leaves the shingles and drops into the gutter rather than running down the back side of it. Skip that step and three seasons of Gulf rain will find the end grain, soft it up, and take the soffit and fascia with it.

We check the tails before we hang anything new. Cut a rotten tail back to sound wood, sister it, then set the roofing fascia straight.

One eave usually runs a day. A full wrap during a Mobile Siding Installation runs longer, since we tie the eave detail into the wall.

Home Fascia

Your home fascia is the board running along the roof edge, the one your gutters are screwed into. It closes off the roof and it carries the weight of every gallon that comes off it. When it softens, the gutter starts sagging away from the house, and during an August downpour that water runs down your wall instead of out the downspout.

Rot here almost always starts at the corners and behind the gutter, where pine stays damp for days after the rain quits. Take a screwdriver to it. If the tip sinks in, that run needs fascia board replacement, not another coat of paint.

Length of the run, height off the ground, and whether the rot crept back into the rafter tails are what move the number. A two story in Midtown is a different day than a one story on a slab.

We do it on its own or as part of a Mobile Siding Installation when the walls and trim are going at the same time.

Soffit Repair

Half the soffit repair calls I get start with a noise. Scratching over the porch ceiling, you look up, and there's a panel hanging loose with a wasp nest or a squirrel behind it.

The panel is almost never the real problem. Something upstream got wet first, usually a gutter that overflowed all August or shingles letting water track back along the fascia. So before we patch anything, we press on the wood behind the panel. Soft wood means we're into roof fascia repair too, and skinning rot with a fresh vinyl soffit just hides the smell until spring.

One more thing crews get wrong: swapping vented panels for solid ones. Block that airflow and your attic bakes.

A few panels on a Spring Hill bungalow is a morning's work, same care we bring to Mobile Siding Installation.

Soffit Installation

A soffit is the underside of your eave, and it's doing two jobs at once: keeping birds and dirt daubers out of the attic, and letting that attic breathe. Get the venting wrong and you're slow-cooking your shingles from below all July.

So soffit installation, done right, starts with math. We figure how much vented panel the attic actually needs, then run F-channel at the wall, a receiving channel at the fascia, and cut panels a quarter inch shy so vinyl soffits can move when it hits ninety-five with the humidity to match. Nails snug, never hammered tight, or the panels buckle like a warped record.

We also pull back insulation that's smothering the baffles, which happens more than you'd think. Most eaves on a single story house take a day, two if the soffit and fascia both come down.

Fascia Soffit Installation

Fascia soffit installation runs in an order, and jumping ahead is how a crew ends up back on the ladder in March. We tear off the old boards first, then put a screwdriver into every rafter tail. Soft wood gets cut back to something solid before a single new piece goes up. Then the sub-fascia, then the F-channel, then the panels, then the fascia cover last so it locks the whole run down.

Ventilation is the part people skip. Your attic wants roughly one square foot of net free vent area for every 150 square feet up there, and solid panels the whole way around will cook a roof deck in a Mobile August.

Most of our Mobile Siding Installation jobs end up touching the soffit and fascia anyway, because new panels can't tuck under rotten wood.

Fascia Board Replacement

Fascia is the board your gutters hang on, and around here it's usually first to go. Wind driven rain, a gutter packed with oak leaves and pine straw, and a Formosan termite swarm in May, and that pine 1x8 turns to sponge.

So we pull the gutter, take the rotten board off, and look hard at the rafter tails behind it. A fascia board replacement over soft tails is just fresh paint on a bad problem. The new board goes up primed on all six sides, then wrapped in aluminum so the sun quits chewing on it. Most houses run a day, two if there's soffit repair waiting behind it. Length of the run, second story access and how far the rot traveled are what move the fascia board replacement cost.

If we're already handling Mobile Siding Installation on that wall, the fascia and soffit get sorted while the ladders are up.

Fixing Soffits And Fascias

Nine times out of ten, the rot starts where the gutter spike pulled loose and nobody noticed until the paint on the fascia board went soft as a biscuit. Our summers here do the rest. Ninety percent humidity from June through September will turn wet pine into mulch in two or three seasons.

So fixing soffits and fascias, done right, means pulling the gutter down, cutting back to solid framing, and checking the rafter tails before anything new goes up. Skip that step and you have wrapped aluminum around damp wood, which hides the problem instead of ending it. On a typical Midtown bungalow, a full run of soffit and fascia work runs one to two days.

The same people who handle Mobile Siding Installation do this trim work, so the reveals and colors actually match the house.

Roof Fascia Repair

Not every soft board needs to come off the house. Roof fascia repair is the middle path: we drop the gutter, cut the rotten section back past the last solid rafter tail, scarf in new material and prime every face and both cut ends before it ever goes up. Around here the cause is nearly always water going somewhere it wasn't invited, a gutter packed with live oak leaves, or a missing drip edge letting an August downpour wick behind the board.

Done badly, it's paint over wet wood. Looks great in the driveway, spongy again by spring.

So we probe with a screwdriver first. If the tip sinks in, patching is throwing good money after bad and I'll tell you that on the ladder. The crew that handles Mobile Siding Installation does this soffit and fascia work too, so a single run is usually a day.

What the job involves

Here's the actual order of operations. We pull the gutters down first, because nobody can do honest fascia board replacement with a gutter hanging off it, then we strip the old soffit and get a look at your rafter tails. That's where Mobile gets you. Ten months of humidity and those August downpours off the bay find one open nail hole and quietly turn pine into oatmeal. Rotten wood gets cut back to something solid, new fascia goes up, then aluminum wrap and vented vinyl soffit so your attic can actually breathe instead of cooking at 140 degrees.

Then the fascia gutters go back on, re-pitched, since half the ones we take down were draining toward the house anyway.

Most homes are a two-day job, three if the roofline is cut up like those old Midtown bungalows. We handle it the same way we approach every Mobile Siding Installation, one wall at a time, nothing hidden.

What it costs

Fascia and soffit gets priced by the running foot, not the square foot, and the number swings on how much soft wood is hiding behind the old aluminum. A one story ranch off Airport Boulevard with sound framing is a different day than a two story in Midtown where twenty years of rain has been quietly at work.

Give us a call at (251) 551-3653 and we'll measure the runs and tell you the figure before we touch anything.

For a rough anchor, when we're wrapping the whole house, mid grade vinyl here runs about $3.43 a square foot, generally $2.81 to $4.05, and soffit and fascia prices alongside it on a full Mobile Siding Installation. What moves fascia board replacement cost is rot, height, and whether the gutters have to come down and go back up.

Why choose us for this

You've got a soffit sagging over the carport, maybe a squirrel treating it like a front door, and what you actually want is to hire somebody once and never think about it again. Not supervise them. Not chase them.

So here are three things we don't do. We don't quote one number on the phone and hand you a bigger one on the invoice. We don't pull the crew off your fascia board replacement to start somebody else's job across town. And we don't leave nails in the grass or push you to sign tonight.

We're not the cheapest bid you'll get. We cut out rotted wood before the vinyl soffit goes up instead of capping over it, and the best part of nine years of fixing soffits and fascias down here has taught me which shortcut fails first after a tropical storm.

Our Mobile Siding Installation estimates cost nothing and come with no obligation to book.

Frequently asked questions