I live in Northern Michigan and when I purchased this house, the previous owner had installed continous 2" soffet in a 2 foot overhang. My house has always had ice damms. It's ranch style with a ridge vent (roof is about 15 yo). I installed gable vents two on each end shortly after I moved in about 18 years ago. This year, I want to install the larger soffet vent, 12". The soffet has plywood coming from the wall 16" to the 2" existing vent than 6" of plywood to the fascia edge which has aluminum fascia. The plywood is nailed. I am going to pull it all out. In the attic, I have installed additional insulation when I moved in and I also installed the styrofoam channels (don't know what they're called) into the rafter ends just above the soffit to help pull the cold air from the soffet vent up against the roof more. Do I need to have plywood on both sides of the continuous 12" vent to make it fit into the aluminum fascia and the (I think it's a j-channel) on the wall side? On the house wall side, I believe there is a j channel to fit the plywood into so I know that's not a problem. It's the fascia side of the overhang I'm worried about. If I were to put the vent right into the aluminum fascia, there would be a gap, I think, as the vent is so much thinner than the plywood. it's what I would like to do as I wouldn't have to cut and nail all that plywood. Just have to cut and nail plywood from the vent edge to the j-channel against the house wall side. Thank You!

Hello, I am in a middle of a shower remodeling. My house exterior is stucco and like any stucco house we do have small cracks near windows corners. When i took down the drywalls, i see 3 layers of tar paper, some kind of waterproof sheet behind it, then the cement of the wall. The tar paper is wet and the studs got some rot to it. Obviously there was a water leak there for a while and we didn't know about it. While the tar paper is wet all the way to 4" above the floor, the studs are only affected at the bottom 10". I guess the water slide down the tar paper. At the base, there is about 5" of the sole plate affected by water. I am trying to find a root cause of the leak of it to fix it and have few questions 1) from the outsides, I can see on small cracks in the stucco. Is that possible the water comes to the inside via those crack? I understand the cracks are usually at the stucco layer and there is another 1.5" thick of cement behind the stucco. The water has to go thru all that to come inside. I do see one small cracks near where I have water damage. Can a crack cause that much of a 5' wide area of damage? 2) How I can inspect and find leaks in a stucco wall? I can see the cracks from the outsides. How to check from the inside? 3) If I tear down the tar paper, do I need to put new paper back? I have no idea how to go about it since it's sandwiched between the studs and the outside wall. 4) In some areas, there isn't any waterproof sheet. I guess the builder did a sloppy job. Do I need some sort of waterproofing? Same as #3, how can I insert something here? On the first picture, you can see the waterproof sheet. It has a letter M on it. In the second picture, there is no such sheet. Please let me know, what are the possible way to go inspect this wall. It seems like a bad idea to tear down the waterproof sheet if that is difficult to put back. It is also possible the water damage come from in the inside, but I'd to make sure the exterior wall is all fine. If I need to caulk any crack, now is the time. Thanks much