Replacing Warped Roof Boards

LESLIE: Next up, we’ve got Niven from California with a roofing question. How can we help you today?

NIVEN: Yes, what I’ve got is I’ve got some what I think they call fascia board on the roof eaves.

LESLIE: Mm-hmm.

TOM: Right.

NIVEN: And those are warped and need to be replaced.

TOM: OK.

NIVEN: Unfortunately, they nailed it in from the top, underneath the shingles.

LESLIE: Yes.

TOM: Oh.

NIVEN: And there’s no leverage underneath or I don’t know how to take that off and put up new ones without taking off the roof and I’d prefer not to take off the roof.

TOM: Sawzall.

LESLIE: Yeah. Or can you get like a pry bar in between that area and just sort of pry them down a little bit and then snip the nails?

TOM: A little of both. Do you know what a sawzall is?

NIVEN: Yes, I do.

TOM: OK. So what you do is you’d get up there on a ladder and get up close to it; you’d slip in a flat bar between the roof sheathing and the fascia; pry it open just enough to get the blade in there and just start cutting away.

NIVEN: OK.

TOM: You’ll cut every nail. I mean it’ll cut like butter with a sharp blade.

NIVEN: OK, but now how do I put up the new?

TOM: Well, why does it have to be nailed from the top? Can’t it be nailed to the front of the rafters?

LESLIE: (overlapping voices) Can’t you go from the front?

NIVEN: But there’s no rafters there. I mean it’s just empty space there with that …

TOM: So it’s just like – comes to the roof sheathing and down? There’s got to be something behind it.

LESLIE: Yeah.

NIVEN: No, there’s nothing behind it. That’s the problem.

LESLIE: What if you took a piece of like 2×2 or 1×1 sort of stripping – 2×1 is probably better or 2×2 – and then screw up from the bottom just to give you like a support into your roof and then you can tack from the front with a new piece.

TOM: (overlapping voices) Yeah, basically create a firring strip.

NIVEN: Oh, OK. So I could screw that into the roof and then tack the fascia board up to that.

LESLIE: (overlapping voices) Mm-hmm. To that.

TOM: (overlapping voices) Right. Right.

NIVEN: Ah.

TOM: And here’s what you want to do on the fascia board. I wouldn’t use wood. I would use one of the composites like AZEK.

NIVEN: A-Z-E-K. OK.

TOM: Yeah, looks like wood; cuts like wood but it’s made – it’s actually extruded …

LESLIE: (overlapping voices) No one wants to eat it. (Niven chuckles)

TOM: Yeah, it’s extruded PVC.

NIVEN: OK. And they have those links and I can …

TOM: Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I put it on my garage when we had a bad carpenter bee problem; they ate up all the fascia.