Here is a section of the old soffit with a birds nest built inside ( there were several nests that I removed from the soffit). The old soffit was 3/4″ prefinished T&G flooring, same as the flooring inside the house. Probably 90% of the boards installed didn’t have any nails to hold them in place. The boards that had been fastened in place were nailed with bright nails, many rusted through in places of weather exposure. The 3/4″ flooring soffit did give the house an interesting look and it may have survived had it been finished with an exterior finish and installed with galvanized finish nails. You can see the round soffit vents (there were not enough for proper ventilation), some had fallen out and this is where birds the would enter and build their nest.
The new soffit is a vinyl perforated triple 4″ panel. The color is Bone, it matched the existing trim color very closely. Since the old soffit was barely nailed in it made it much easier to removed the old and install the new.
Here is the front of the house with the scaffolding setup.
A view of Portage Lake from atop of the scaffolding. In the distance you can see the WUOM antenna tower on Peach Mountain.
Here is closeup of the lower overhang detail. This was added after the house had been sided as it was all placed over the siding. We added some trim and J-channel (not shown) to make the installation look cleaner and more professional. We added a lot of screws to this framing as it was a little bouncy. The original soffit (1/2″ mdf core engineered flooring) was mostly only nailed at the sub fascia and then caulked at the house side. I sure you can guess that it was warped and falling out in places.
We removed the rain gutter to since we needed bend new fascia to accommodate the new soffit.
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