How To Install Soffit And Fascia

welcome back to the channel guys in today's video i'm going to show you how to install soffit and fascia like a pro so my goal is by ending this video you can do your own project with these if you're new to this channel my name is josh this channel is all about building your own house saving a ton of money so be sure to subscribe smash that like button and ring the bell so you get a notification every time i release a new video so if you see the house here behind me we're going to install the softened fascia across here and install the fascia across the top of that gable so let's get started so the first thing we need to do before we install the soffit is install what's called f channel f channel is what holds the soffit to the house it's just more or less a track it just slides into so in order to get the height of this f channel you simply just take your framing square slide it against the house until it butts against your fascia board boom so that tells me i'm on the same level as this fascia board so you just mark the top of your square and that's going to be the top of our um soffit where it hits the house so in order for this f channel to work out right you need to understand that the top of the soffit is going to be the top of this track not the bottom so when it goes across it's going to be same level from here to here not from the bottom but from here so go ahead and make a mark and then we're going to hook our chalk line to it and go down about 12 foot and snap a line so that way it gives us a level mark to go across of to install our f channel so i wanted to show you this up close here is my chalk line going across that is the same plane as this sub fascia board and right here is the f channel i have installed over my uh porch here so if you can see this f channel now it's flipped kind of upside down because this is a finished exposed edge now as you run this where there's going to be siding you're going to want to flip it like this if that makes sense you'll understand better i'll show you a close-up of what this looks like on the other side of the porch here so you better understand it but when you install this f channel you simply line the top of this to the chalk line so it's going to look something like that so you better understand the transition if you look closely there you'll see from the porch beam it transitions to the regular part of the house and the f channel is flipped on different sides where it's nailed so now that we got our f channel installed we got to get the length for our soffit and in order to do that all you got to do is slide your tape measure into the f channel go tight against the back of it measure to the very end of the sub fascia and in this case we got 12 inches so after you get your measurement from the edge to the inside of the f channel subtract a quarter inch so we had 12 inches as our actual measurement we need to cut the pieces eleven and three quarter let's go cut some so after you know the length of the soffit you need you're gonna have to cut it into sections like this in order to do that there's three very common ways i'm going to show you each way one's going from the most basic using the most basic tools to more complex ways using more complex tools but it will cut it much faster so it goes from diying for a small project up to a big project for a professional so let's get started so i'm going to show you the most common way first it involves a framing square and a pair of tin snips and all you got to do is just cut it like a regular board so first thing you would do just go ahead and make a measurement say 11 and three quarter in this case and you would go ahead and just take your framing square just like you were going to cut a board lay it against a straight edge and then slide it up to your mark and that way it's going to give you a nice square line and then you simply just take your ten snips and cut along that line like so and this stuff cuts relatively easy and the colder it is the more brittle it is so you need to be very careful not to crack it so just trace that or cut along that line and then boom you got 11 and three quarter inch piece this is not the method i use on my jobs i typically use another method that's much faster so let me show you that one the second method that i like to use involves a soffit jig and if you need to know how to make one of these i'll put a link up here to a video i made on how to make this exact jig so this involves a circular saw in this case a battery circular saw with the blade turned backwards so that way it doesn't damage the soffit as it cuts because it's too aggressive if you have it turned around the regular way and it involves wearing ear protection because it's super loud so if you need to use circular saw i recommend using a jig like this and this soffit comes in 12 foot sheets so you can get 24 pieces by the time you double up the soffit because there's two sheets laying here so each cut gets you two foot a soffit so it's very fast and portable so this is one i like to use so i'm going to show you how to do it all you got to do is go ahead and you can either measure onto the soffit of the length you need so you can just measure over let's say eleven and three quarter and make a mark or you can have a reference line on your soffit jig like i do for every couple inches so that way you can just use it as a reference but um either way works well so that looks pretty good right there and then what's very nice is there's no um there's no skill into cutting this you simply just lay it into the track and just run your blade right down it and then voila you have two pieces of soffit and you can just simply if you have a mark on your jig line it up to that mark and run it down it all right let's move on to the third way which is probably the most common way other than using a soffit jig to cut it fast let's do it so the third and final way that i've found you could cut soffit fast is using a miter box like this that slides so you can get these long cuts so cutting 12 inch soffit is easy with something like this so the only reason why i don't like to use this method is because it's hard to kind of hold the soffit mark it and cut it that's why i found the jig to be much faster but if you use this method be sure to take your blade off and turn it around backwards preferably use a trim blade so it's already finer tooth then once you turn around backwards you'll definitely cut it without breaking the soffit if it isn't too cold so yeah i mean this method's fine and like i said you just need an expensive tool like this to do it so it's probably the least common for me to use i mean if i'm in a pinch and i don't have my soffit uh jig then i'll probably resort to this over the standard using the framing square method so just something to keep in mind but that is the three most common ways to cut soffit so i went ahead and pre-cut about 24 pieces of soffit and the reason why i could is because i took a measurement every 10 foot down the overhang and my measurements were consistent so i can pre-cut a bunch of them so i'd recommend you go through take measurements to make sure you can do the same because fascia the sub fascia has been known to vary within a quarter inch sometimes so double check that before you pre-cut a bunch just to save you a bunch of wasted soffit all right let's go ahead and install this pile of soffit all right we're going to go ahead and install this piece of soffit it's very easy to do you have a nailing flange on this side and then an interlocking channel on this side so you just take this side lock it into the existing soffit slot it into the f channel make sure it's nice and snug and make sure it all looks good as far as the expansion gap that all looks really good go ahead and take a aluminum roofing nail i use an inch and a quarter galvanized go ahead and nail it into the nailing flange on the sub fascia and this is something you do nail relatively tight make sure we look nice and square it looks good and the reason why i nailed this stuff tighter than you do siding is because siding you need to leave enough room for it to kind of be movable now this is going to be solid so by the time you put your fascia up here it's not going anywhere anyways but so wind don't blow it out for sure always nail it snug and now the next piece is going to require a soffit vent because i got a bathroom on the other side of this wall so in order to vent the bathroom i need to come out the soffit so i'm going to show you how to install that next all right so this contraption is called a soffit vent and the idea here is this is under the soffit and this goes above the soffit and this just sandwiches between the soffit so what you got to do take a piece of soffit and cut the center out like this and you just slide the piece together and what you need to do before you slide this together before you install it you need to put a block up above to nail this to before you install your soffit but i'm going to go ahead and snap this together so you'll see what it looks like on the ground so you just slide it in here into your pre-cut piece it's very uh you want to cut this relatively tight because you want to make sure bugs can't slide in between the cracks here so that's pretty important so again slide that in tight as you can see a nice solid fit looks good and then if you're putting this piece on in this particular model you want this solid edge on the pointing out so you don't see it inside the venting so we know we're going to snap in like this so we need to put our solid piece pointing out like that so just simply after you have this installed like that above you just snap this together like so just gonna snap together and uh it's uh pretty easy after it's nailed because you'll have a solid piece to push against so by the time it's said and done you're going to have something that looks like that hanging so it's pretty pretty sweet contraption sometimes like i said these bathrooms you can't vent out the side of the house because there's no way to vent because the way the walls land so just fyi let's go ahead and continue that soffit from below that's what your soffit vent is going to look like it gives it a nice sleek appearance each piece of soffit covers a foot so after you get going with this and get your own little system down it moves pretty quick and if you look at the trees in the background there was a good bit of wind going on while i was making this video so you will hear some wind noise here and there so just as a little heads up and after i get this soffit up to the end of that f channel it's time to install the next piece of f channel and i usually just start in the middle and go ahead and nail it at every stud i try to hit every stud while i nail this sometimes i miss and i have to put a nail in beside a nail but all in all i do hit the studs it does make a much more solid piece of f channel when you do that and here i am just continuing that run on the new piece of f channel and you want to make sure as you go across like i said before just put those nails in snug if you want this process to be a little more efficient you can install the soffit and fascia as you install the siding if you're using a scaffolding and the reason why i say that you see how many times i got to move the ladder and not only that it's so much easier to work off a scaffolding instead of a ladder i want to show you what you do when you get to the end here so when you get to the end of this bird box right here you just gotta nail the ends with aluminum fascia nails because there's no way to have a nailing flange here because when you're in the run you're gonna cut that off to end it so you're gonna have something that looks about like that so the product i'm gonna be installing for the fascia is six inch ribbed aluminum fascia and you gotta fasten this using aluminum nails so i got small white trim nails that are aluminum that's gonna blend in with this fascia and how you install this fascia on this overhang is different compared to how you install it on a gable end because this gets guttering put on it so you can face nail this but you can't face nail the gable end and i'll show you how to do that in just a bit so the first thing you got to do is slide this up under your um drip edge that's on the roof so you got to overlap the other piece about an inch or so and then it slides up under the drip edge and sometimes you got to work it back and forth to get it under the drip edge and it this is much easier to do with two people but i'm one of those that works alone a lot so i choose to save a couple dollars all right so after you have this thing pushed up under the drip edge you want to make sure your overlap is no more than an inch and no less than an inch all right so after you get your overlap correct and it's a little uneven there so push it up all the way and now just put a trim nail here in the center and push it up tight against the soffit we're just going to face nail right in the center so i'll always put two nails every about three foot or so there's no exact science to the nailing but i wouldn't put it any farther apart than every three foot so now just know what every three foot then at the joint we put two in the joint as well so that way it kind of ties all that fascia in together so just do that till we get to the end where the bird box is and that's where i'm going to show you a certain way you got to cut around that bird box stay tuned again i can't stress this enough you only face nail the fascia where you're going to be having guttering screwed to the fascia just keep that in mind okay so once you get to the end of your fascia do not nail it yet because as you know already that gets overlapped so you keep that nail free to your next piece overlaps like we did over there then we nail it all right so in order to finish this run i need a 92 and three quarter inch piece to come from the end here and to overlap an inch on the other piece but i'm going to add another inch and i'm going to overlap this bird box i'm going to show you why after i wrap this whole thing but i'm going to show you how to cut this end piece so we'll cut that then i'll show you how to wrap the bird box so let's get into the garage and get it cut so here's our piece of fascia so we know we need a 92 and three quarter inch piece exposed on the overhang so we measure 92 and three quarter and we make a mark on the piece that overlaps the soffit because we're just going to make a cut there so go ahead and mark a straight line there i use a speed square it seems to be the quickest hence the name speed square and then we just go over about an inch doesn't that be perfect so it's roughly an inch then we're going to make a square line going across the face all right so we're going to cut this come over and cut that and then i'll show you how to bend this to wrap around that bird box so what i like to do before i cut this is just flip it over and then score the crease between this line and this line because this is going to allow you to break it easier instead of trying to cut it with your snips so that scored very very deeply and then go ahead and cut this side all right and then sneak on the other side here and cut that side all right now since we have that side scored that we did it should snap pretty easy so there we go so lay this scrap to the side and this is our piece we're going to need so flip it over now we need a straight line from this edge from here scored so we just go ahead and put our speed square there score it not real deep just kind of lightly and now you just take a block that's square lay it up to where you scored so somewhere around there and i'm going to go ahead and just re-score it to make sure we're on the right line okay again not real deep this is just so you can bend it easier and now we just gotta bend this end up there we go and this acts as a nice guide to keep it square and then i'll go ahead and fold it in a little more than it needs to be and then fold it out just a little bit so that way it gives us a nice sharp appearance okay so something like that so from this side you have a nice square piece that's going to wrap that bird box it's going to look really sharp when it's done all right so that's the piece finishing up the run and as you can see here the reason why i bent this metal is because when you put this l piece on to wrap this bird box this is going to be an exposed edge if you cut it flush but if you wrap it any water that hits that corner will run down this aluminum instead touching this wood behind so now we got to wrap this like i said so we got to do is get a measurement from here to here and then from here to back here then we know exactly what we got to bend and then you measure the distance from here to here to know how wide this has to be to wrap it so we're going to use the remaining piece of that metal to make this bird box wrap and the first thing we got to do is measure over for our face so let's go over 11 and 7 8 and then we're going to take our speed square mark a square line okay and now we're going to go ahead and snip that okay all right and now what we're going to do is cut a little triangle out of it and i'll show you this up close here in just a second and that's way with that triangle out of there it'll bend easier if you're wondering why you gotta do that so that's what it looks like a nice triangle here's a straight cut then a little angle and then we make our next measurement which is eleven and three quarter heavy and when i say heavy i just mean sixteenth more than eleven and three quarter that is construction talk all right and now let's go ahead and square that all right and now this one we're going to cut off all the way so we're going to go ahead and cut that straight line okay and now we're going to put a straight line using our speed square here and we're going to snip that all the way off [Music] and a good pair of tent snips are hard to beat for this i wouldn't recommend buying just any tin snips i'd buy a good pair all right and now we're going to come back to where our straight line is here and use our straight edge board we're just going to line up with our cut mark let's see try to get this to where it sits the best it looks pretty good all right like i said always score it a little bit before i bend it just gives it a nice line to follow all right so now just go ahead hold the board tight and bend that metal over okay so now we'll get the board out of the way and finish bending that all the way over and always like to take my hands and just go ahead and bend it more than it needs to be okay and then pull it back just a little bit so that way it gives us a nice square edge and as you can see it's a nice sharp crease in there which that's what we want and now let's go install this piece of metal all right so in order to install this all you got to do is place it over the bird box like so push it up snug on each end and make sure it all looks good make sure you're not overhanging too much over here and the corner looks good everything looks good so now just hold it up into place and the only place you can nail this for the moment is right up here so we're going to tack a nail in here to hold it all right and now don't nail this side yet and we can put another tack up in this corner okay put these nails up high because the soffit's going to cover those nails up and you don't put any nails in the face here and then like i said don't nail this yet because your piece of fascia that comes over this gable is going to overlap this you don't want nails in the way so we're going to cut this piece of metal next so i'm going to show you how to cut it and how it nails into this piece so what we got to do is get a measurement of our overhang here so it looks like we need at least uh we can do 14 inches so we're going to come 14 inches past this with the metal cut it off straight and then we can fine tune it after it's overhanging so um this doesn't have to be the perfect length because like i said we can cut it off after we install it but just make sure it's long enough to go across this on a diagonal so let's go cut that all right so grab your piece of fascia lay it face down make sure you're using the right side depending on what side of the gable you're on let's come back here measure 14 inches so right here's 14 inches and this is just a rough measurement at this point because we're going to fine cut it after it's up i'll show you how to do that in just a moment so go ahead and square that up okay and now before you cut and break that what we're going to do is score this several times you want to make sure you have a nice deep score here because it'll make it easier when you go to bending and cutting or breaking this edge off i should say all right so three or four good scores should be fine and now take your ten snips cut down the line and now you don't cut the face obviously because we need this part to overhang so now the best thing to do is bend this over okay then pull back on it and it'll snap that piece off and now this is going to give us something to overhang that bird box so let's go get it installed all right so in order to install this you must first slide it up into your drip edge just like you did the other fascia all right so now as we slide all the way down make sure we're tight against that bird box that looks pretty good and now we go ahead and push it up tight we're going to take a trim nail and instead of nailing the face of it this time we're going to nail it up under into the groove of the soffit so we'll go ahead and get a nail started here and i'll show you up close after i have this installed what it looks like and be real easy you don't over nail it because it's easy to ever nail that all right and then every three feet or so put a nail up under it into it make sure you're tight against the subface when you do this because if this bowed out and you nail it it's going to be difficult to get it back all the way if you can all right it's a little breezy today too which that makes a little more difficult as well so now um i'm going to go ahead and show you how to cut this end off it's very easy but i'm going to show you so you must not forget that this part right here wasn't nailed yet so you got to make sure it's tight and then hold your piece you just put on that's overlapping it and just pop a nail right in the middle right here towards the lower end of this so that's the only spot you should have to face nail on this whole gable for the fascia so as you can see this doesn't look right right so now that this is sitting where it needs to be all you got to do take your pencil and scrub from behind where it needs cut off on the front and back okay and now all you got to do is take your ladder on the other side cut those lines and then it'll cut right off that's why you don't nail this end yet because you can flex it out to cut it easier depending on what handing you are it could be easier one hand versus the other all right and that looks pretty good so now as you can see you just got to go back on the other side and put a couple nails to hold that into place all right i usually come back about a half inch and nail along this edge that way it just seals that end up really nicely so that's how you wrap your bird box in metal i hope you found that easy so now i'm going to grab the camera and i'm going to show you underneath where i nailed it so you understand what i meant by nailing into the soffit groove okay so if you look here there's this soft it is now you see the nail is into the fascia and into that groove you don't want to nail it here because it'll push this soffit up when you put a nail in it so you want to make sure you're in that groove and that's what it looks like here another thing i wanted to show you you can nail right here too because your j-channel where actually your vinyl corner is going to come up and cover this up so if you stay within about a half inch three quarters inch you should be able to cover that up with uh corners and uh if you look over here that's what that looks like and it's up to you if you want to put nails in this uh drip edge i do sometimes if it's sticking out a lot but um you know some people recommend not doing it in case you gotta replace your roof and pull a drip edge off and it's nailed to your fascia so that's kind of your choice but that's what that looks like up close and let me show you what the bottom ended up looking like you'll probably be happy with it i was happy with it um that's what it looks like that was a long run that was about a 70 foot run of soffit and fascia so turned out all right i cannot complain about that all right guys i hope you found this video helpful if you have any questions about this project i just did as far as the fascia soffit anything of that nature go and ask them in the comments below and i'll get to you as soon as possible and again i want to say thanks a lot for watching be sure to subscribe smash that like button ring the bell so you get notifications every time i release a new video and thanks again guys and i'll see you in the next video peace

Channel: The Excellent Laborer

Views: 227,791

Rating: 4.9381013 out of 5

Keywords: how to install soffit and fascia, soffit, soffit and fascia install, how to install soffit, fascia, install soffit & fascia, soffit installation, soffit and fascia, how to install fascia, how to cut soffit and fascia, how to install fascia boards, how to build a soffit and fascia return, how to install a soffit, install soffit, install fascia, how to install fascia on gable end, soffit and facia how to, how to install fascia board on gable end, soffit and facia install

Id: g75EsMti-lE

Length: 29min 57sec (1797 seconds)

Published: Thu May 06 2021