This morning Matt and I were supposed to hang guttering on the north side of the addition. This is the only place where there was guttering when we bought the house, and it was completely rotted through, pouring water right into a small lake where it splashed up and rotted the French door and a couple of window frames as well.
I climbed on the flat roof with my pry bar, and began yanking and pulling to knock loose the ferrules holding the guttering on, and discovering that the gutter trough had been nailed directly to the fascia in several places. However, a little force applied properly got the un-rotted sections of gutter and downspout pulled loose.
It was when I got to the rotted section of gutter that the fun began. When I pushed up the pry bar behind the gutter and heaved, the bar went straight through the fascia. A little investigation showed that the fascia was rotted and would have to be replaced before anything could be hung from it, and in order to replace it, I had to finish pulling down the rotten gutter. So after a batch more yanking and hauling, I managed to get all the guttering on the ground, then climbed back up and started assessing the extent of the rot.
The answer didn’t please me. Besides the fascia, one decorative (non-load bearing) piece of 2×6 rafter was rotten and needed replacement, and all of the joist ends in that area were either rotted or covered in yellow fungus, or both. The only way to fix this is to “sister” in another section of 2×6 on each joist, gluing and then nailing the two pieces together to provide something solid to nail the fascia boards to. At the same time I discovered the plywood decking on the overhang above the French door was rotten as well, and it would have to be replaced, requiring the taking down of a canister light above the door, and ripping away several more pieces of rotten wood.
I unhooked the light, then began pulling down the bad wood on the overhang, enduring regular showers of rot, wood chips, asphalt and gravel from a previous roof installation, grass from old bird and rat nests, and who knows what other filth. Once everything was down, it took a couple of trips to Home Depot to get all the wood and bits home (it’s impossible to carry a 4×8 sheet of plywood on top of a VW Beetle). Now I have building materials and building trash all over the side yard, waiting for the next phase to begin.
Dracula marries Rudolf Diesel at the Stoneleigh P. Fnord.
