Nothing says Mobile like a thunderstorm that clocks in at three in the afternoon, right on schedule. Your gutters take that water, and the fascia and soffit behind them take whatever the gutters miss. Wood drinks up the humidity, paint bubbles, and before long a squirrel finds the soft spot and moves in without paying rent.
So we fix it. Fascia board replacement and soffit repair on houses from Midtown out to West Mobile, on the same ladders we use for Mobile Siding Installation, because siding and the roofline meet at the same edge. We turn up when we said we would, we don't talk over you, we keep the ladder legs out of your azaleas, and every scrap of rotted board leaves in our truck.
Below: how the work goes, what moves the price, and the questions people ask first. Call me at (251) 551-3653 and I'll come have a look.
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.
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 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.
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
Fascia and soffit work starts with the gutters coming down, because nobody can do a straight fascia board replacement with a gutter hanging off the board he's trying to cut. Then the old soffit comes out and we get eyes on your rafter tails. That's where the trouble hides. One open nail hole, a few seasons of afternoon downpours, and the end of a pine tail goes soft enough to take a screwdriver to the handle.
Rotten wood gets cut back to something solid, new fascia goes up, then aluminum wrap and vented vinyl soffit so the attic can pull air instead of baking at 140 degrees.
The fascia gutters go back re-pitched. Half of what we pull down was draining toward the house.
Figure two to three days on most homes, longer if the roofline is chopped up with dormers and returns.
What it costs
What it costs gets figured by the running foot, not the square foot, since fascia and soffit follow the roofline rather than the wall. The big swing is how much soft wood is hiding behind the old aluminum. A one story ranch out on Cottage Hill Road with sound framing is a tidy day's work.
A two story where water has been sitting in the ends of the rafter tails means new subfascia before a single piece of trim goes up.
What moves fascia board replacement cost most is rot, height, and whether the fascia gutters have to come down and go back up dead straight.
Get me on the phone at (251) 551-3653 and we will measure the runs, put a screwdriver in the wood and give you the figure before anything comes off.
Nobody can price hidden rot from the curb, and finding it mid job costs you more than finding it at the measure.
When fascia and soffit is the wrong fix
Sometimes fascia and soffit work is the wrong money to spend, and I'd sooner say so from the ladder than after the invoice. If the wood is rotting at the eave because the tar shingles are curled back and water is running behind the drip edge, new boards will be soft again inside a year. That's a roof repair first, and the same goes for a rusted eave detail on metal roofing.
Gutters that overflow every hard rain because they're pitched backward or short a downspout will chew through anything I hang. What you want there is gutter installation, then the trim.
And a warehouse with parapet walls and barely an eave doesn't need soffit installation, it needs commercial roofing.
Wrapping clean aluminum over wet framing just hides the smell for a season.
Why choose us for this
Your fascia and soffit is sagging over the carport, something furry has probably found the gap, and what you want is to hire one outfit once and stop thinking about it. Not manage them. Not chase them.
So the number I give you on the phone is the number on the invoice. If we open a run and find rafter tails gone soft, you hear it before anybody buys material, not after the fascia board replacement is half up.
What I won't do is cap fresh vinyl soffit over punky, wet wood to make the day go quicker. That buys you a season and rots the framing behind it. Rot depth, the length of the run, second story access and whether the fascia gutters come down first are what move a soffit and fascia quote.
Estimates cost nothing and nobody has to book off one. Then we cut back to sound wood and build from there.
Frequently asked questions
Can you fix just the rotted section, or does all the fascia have to come off?
Usually just the section. If the rot stops at one rafter tail and the board is dry either side, we cut back to solid wood and splice in new. Once the damage runs past two or three joints, though, full fascia board replacement is cheaper than chasing it. Soffit repair works the same way.
What changes fascia board replacement cost?
Length of run, height, whether we're working around fascia gutters, and what we find behind the old wood. Rotten rafter tails after a wet Mobile summer add carpentry. Vinyl soffit costs less to maintain than painted wood.
How do we get started?
Call me at (251) 551-3653 and we'll look at it. Our Mobile Siding Installation crew handles the fascia and soffit too, so it's one trip.
Contact Mobile Siding Pros now
Contact us now, while it's still a fascia and soffit job and not a framing job. Rot runs the length of a board, so the two soft feet you can see from the yard usually isn't the whole of it.
Call (251) 551-3653 and tell me three things: how many stories, whether your gutters hang off the boards in question, and whether a ladder can get around back without going through a neighbor's fence. That's most of what I need before I put a ladder up.
Somebody's here nine to five, Monday through Friday, and messages get returned the same day where I can. If a storm has left a run of soffit flapping over your porch, that one we'll take on a Saturday.
Fixing soffits and fascias is most of what we do lately, from roof fascia repair on one gable to vented vinyl soffits all the way around.