The Details Matter

There are many tiny details that ensure a structure stands the test of time. One of those details is a drip edge at the outer edges of a roof. Without a drip edge in place, water approaching the edge of the roof will tend to wrap under the roofing material and rot out the eaves or barge boards.

As it would happen, almost all the roof edges of my house have drip edge, except for one spot. As you might imagine, the barge board and eaves rotted out there.

The first step was to remove a bit of the rotted barge board on one side.

Thankfully most of the wood was still good and I didn't have to cut away the moulding and figure out what to do with that. In fact, even the wood I did have to remove wasn't all that terrible.

Rotten to be sure, but still not too bad. I caught it in time to save a more drastic repair.

To get to the rotten eaves I had to remove the eavestrough, and so I did.

Obviously it had been overlooked the last time the house was painted. Maybe the last few times, it's hard to say.

To keep things moving along, I cut and painted a chunk of redwood left over from replacing some dividers in the motorcycle driveway, and glued it into place. I was considering using wood glue, but the board was a bit rough where I cut out the rot so I used construction adhesive instead.

It's kind of amazing how much nicer the redwood looks than the original fir. I also pre-painted the redwood 2x6 I would be using to replace the rotted eave board while I got to work tearing the latter down.

Thankfully there was no major rot or insect damage behind it. There was a bit of rot in the end of the other barge board, but it was only in the last half inch or so and so I decided to just leave it.

A little caulking over top will hide those crimes.

Despite how bad it looked and the fact that it wouldn't hold a screw in a number of places, the eave board was, again, not all that bad on the inside. There were a few rotted cracks and a fairly sizable soft spot near the end, but otherwise the wood itself was pretty solid.

Once the paint was dry on the new 2x6 it was a pretty easy matter to put it in place, especially given how light it was thanks to being kiln dried.

I had initially considered leaving the eavestrough for the following Monday, to give the paint behind it a little longer to cure and dry, but I was still feeling pretty good by then so I decided to knock it out.

It's a good thing I did, as it rained the following morning.

Now the keen-eyed among you might have noticed that there's still no drip edge. Unfortunately due to complications involving the end of the world I wasn't able to get to the home center to buy a new length of drip edge to install. Rest assured, though, as soon as the apocalypse is over and the world is reborn anew, I will remedy this oversight.