My fascia is in bad shape and I’m under the gun to get it repaired/replaced as soon as possible. Rather than try to make repairs in cold snowy weather (Denver), I’m going to buy new wood; prime and paint it – indoors - and then install it when I get a break in the weather. So, this will be painted indoors and then moved outside (perhaps stored outside for a couple weeks (sub-freezing) and at some point installed under the roof eave. In other words – it will be going thru some temperature and moisture extremes before it is finally installed. I guess my biggest concern is warping before I get it installed.


I have two areas of concern:

1) –I want the fascia to be durable, but don’t have a lot of money. I plan on doing a good job sealing it, so it seems some sort of standard lumber (pine?) should suffice (instead of redwood, cedar, Hardie Plank, Trex, pvc, etc)?
(High humidity / high precipitation are not a problem in Denver. New gutters will be seamless aluminum.)

2) – Sealing:

Primer - Zinnser - BULLS EYE 1-2-3® PLUS PRIMER (water based)

Paint - Benjamin Moore Premium Exterior – flat finish (Acrylic Latex)
Although I originally was going “oil based”, I’ve found latex to be about as good and it is also appealing, as I will be painting fascia boards indoors (fumes & volatility) – in spare room of my small house.


Questions:

1 - What sort of wood should I use (pine okay)?

2 – If I prime all sides, but only paint the edges and face of the fascia, the backside of fascia (primed and sealed only) will be inside – protected by soffit and roof – once installed.
But, will this adequately protect the wood from moisture and warping for a couple weeks - if it sits outside - waiting to be installed?
Or, should I keep inside until I’m ready to take them outside to install (in cold damp environment)? No acclimatization?

Thanks,
Will

 

Hard to say, because we don't know what fascia you currently have on the house. Is this a repair (between two existing pieces) where you would need to match the exact thickness of the existing? Is your fascia 1 1/2" thick or 3/4" thick? Or some other fractional amount?

Generally cedar is what is used on fascia, at least west of the Mississippi, it is. If cedar is used, I'd recommend a shellac based primer like Zinsser B-I-N, followed by a 100% acrylic latex exterior paint on all 6 sides. Once the paint is dry, store it inside or out... just make sure it is flat and elevated off the ground. It's going to be out there eventually.

 

When I worked in fla, they used a lot of cedar for fascia boards. IMO a good coat of an exterior oil base primer is better than using a pigmented shellac like BIN. If you use pine, bullseye 123 plus should be ok although an oil base primer is always better.

With a solvent base primer on all 6 sides you should be ok with not applying finish paint on the back and top edge. If you use a latex primer, it would be best to apply a coat of finish to all 6 sides.

 

Thank you both Marksr and xsleeper.
I’ve done a bit more research and I’ve also taken something from each of your posts:

The old fascia is 1x8 – not sure what kind of wood.
I am replacing all my fascia – about 140 feet. Some of it is rotted away and the rest needs a serious paint job, but from my perspective it will just be easier to replace it all instead of stripping (plus painting in sub freezing temps is out – and this can’t wait for warmer days). I'm replacing gutters too.

Okay, sounds like its going to be 1x8 cedar (damn expensive, but I guess it’s the responsible way to go).

An exterior oil based primer looks to be a good bet:
Zinsser Cover Stain
RustOleum.com

Questions:

I’m guessing that cedar is a “hard” enough wood to take and hold gutters with the hidden screw-in hangers (about every 18” - 24”)? More concerned about the weight that will inevitably occur when the gutters get jammed (one of these years) with leaves, water and ice).

I’m thinking of covering the corners with those aluminum corner fittings; thoughts (corners seem to be where my old fascia failed the worst)?

Thanks again,
Will

 

When you buy the fascia, you should be able to get cedar fascia, which is usually clear finger jointed sections of cedar. It's pretty much the standard around here. The oil primer can't hurt, I prefer the BIN because it dries fast. The aluminum corners are usually a good idea since they will hide an ugly miter joint. Trim the bottoms of the corners with a tin snips so that the bottom lip doesn't hold water. If you nail, look for Maze hot dipped siding nails. They have a very narrow shank and are less likely to split the wood. Cedar is soft, so use a nail set to finish the nails or you will leave hammer tracks on it, which is a no-no.

Cedar is actually very soft, so IMO you will want to mark your rafter tails on your drip edge with a marker, and use screws that are long enough to reach the subfascia or rafter tails, which are likely 24" OC. If you find that any of your rafter tails are punky, I'd sister a scrap of new wood along side them.

 

Yes, I'm still moving toward this project; spent a couple hundred on tools and materials today.

I finally found a gutter guy with a good price for chop-n-drop and hope to have those gutter runs in the next couple days ($1.90ft).
Yes, I'll mark where my rafters are.

Xsleeper, lots of good points!
Still shopping around for decent cedar (most builders apparently use composites of one kind or another for fascia, but I want solid cedar).

Yes, I'll get the Maze; ring shank for better holding in the old rafters.

So, another question - wood preservative treatment?
As I'm pulling off old fascia and replacing it with new painted fascia, exposing rafter tails, I want to treat that 55yr old wood with some sort of preservative (I've already pulled one piece of fascia off and the rafter tail seemed okay - except it was very, very dry).

What do you think of something like linseed oil?
The thing is, I'm going to be working on about 20 foot spans at a time (pull off the old fascia, treat rafter tails, nail up the new fascia). I'm working by myself and I don't want to have too much rafter exposed at a time (squirrels, the elements, etc) - so the fumes from the wood preservative won't have a lot time to air out. I'm concerned about the fire risk (both spontaneous combustion and ignition from my furnace).
My natural gas-fired furnace is in the attic.

I'm going to have lots of that Zinnser oil-based primer. Would that be about as good as the linseed oil at preserving the rafter tails; slightly less combustible?

thanks

 

Linseed is good for dried out lumber although you should cut in half with paint thinner. It is prone to mildew in the south, I don't know if that is an issue in your locale. Oil base primer will seal the lumber. I don't know that one would be more combustible than other - wet or dry.

 

Searching for source of painted steel to cover wooden, peeling paint fascia boards.
Saw on-line, but can not relocate.

 

Thanks reidfm, but my fascia is bad (dry-rot, etc) and I'm just going to rip it all off (about 160') and replace with cedar.

I finally bought cedar a couple days ago after trying to find cedar finger-jointed board with no success.

Around here, lumber yards have really closed up in the last decade; not as easy to find what I'm looking for as it was back then.

I ended up paying a premium (about $1.32 ft) - now I'm cleaning it up and priming and painting on a sawhorse assembly line set-up.

In between waiting for paint to dry I'll be tearing off the old gutter.

Shingles arrived yesterday.

So, it seems to be taking forever but I'm finally pretty much past the research and planning phase and actually doing.

Thanks everyone; will probably have some pics if not more questions.

Will

 

I did it!!
But, did I do it wrong?!

The problem, for me, with thinking for myself - is that sometimes things go the wrong direction.

So, I finally replaced all the fascia on my house and a little bit of soffit.

- shopped and shopped for cedar 1x6 and bought the best I could come up with (not that great and more money than I wanted to spend).
- multi-coates of Zinsser oil based primer.
- multi-coates of Benjamin Moore exterior latex
- tore off old rusted gutters (drip-edge was built into gutter design) and fascia.
- treated rafter tails with linseed (cut with paint thinner).
- marked rafter locations

So far so good, yes?

Well, here's the challenge I didn't mention.
I didn't have a helper so I had to figure out how to hang 10 foot long fascia by myself - to line up those joints nicely.

So, I hobbled together a clamp (see link to flickr photo set below) from these nifty bar clamps I have. I made a platform from scrap plywood and weighted the back with a heavy pipe and ran screws to dig into the old shingles.
Another concern I had was top nailing the new fascia to keep it from bowing out.
I'm doing all this work myself and I'm not ready to tear off shingles yet and lifting them up to top nail the fascia would just give me a handful of crumbling shingles.

So I thought maybe I could bevel the top of the fascia and the sheathing would hold it in place until I got to tearing off the roof. Also, the sheathing may need to be replaced and that would have meant pulling nails out of the cedar fascia and re-nailing (once again - risk of splitting cedar).
Also, the bevel would allow rain to fall away from house instead working back under sheathing.

So, there you have it - three reason to bevel the top of my fascia:
- Works great with my "fascia clamp" - naturally wedges up under the sheathing.
- Will hold until I top nail later
- Any rain or snow will flow away from roofing (till I add drip edge, new roofing and gutters).

That's what I did, before painting - table saw cut an aproximate 23 degree bevel to match pitch of roof.

Some of it has been up for over a week and still looks good.

But, now I'm starting to worry (cause that's what I do); did I mess up?
Can you see any reason the building inspector might have a problem with the fact that I beveled the top of the fascia?

More photos of my fascia project and fascia clamp here:
Replacing My Fascia - a set on Flickr

 

Is that 6 layers of shingles?? You do plan on addressing that, right? Fascia looks fine from the pix you presented. Like the "helping hands".

 

"Is that 6 layers of shingles?? You do plan on addressing that, right? "

My best guess is 3 layers of shingles plus a starter strip.

Working by myself and considering that some of the old fascia was rotted thru, I figured to tackle the fascia and soffit first instead of scraping off the roof - which is not leaking - and then stopping (with an exposed roof) to work on the fascia.

I've got 60 bundles of shingles sitting in my backyard (put together an electric ladder hoist to raise them as I need them).

We have some rain and snow forecast this weekend so my plan is to clean the shingles off my garage roof Monday. My garage is detached, so it will be good to "practice on" to see how the city inspectors are to work with before I move on to re-shingling my house.

"Fascia looks fine from the pix you presented. Like the 'helping hands'."

Thanks, I was real pleased with how well it worked (better than a helper). It did slip off the roof and hit me in the head once; learned to pay a little more attention to it after that.

My biggest concern now is whether or not the city is going to find fault with my beveled fascia.
Not sure why they would, but I'm kind of making things up as I go and that can get a person into trouble sometimes.