Opening up the Eaves out of Necessity - Critters!

[Sara]

Something crazy happened this weekend. We tore down the soffits around the dormer.

Long story short, I had a bat in the house about two weeks ago. And then I read online that about 90% of the time that there is a bat in the house it can be attributed to a colony living somewhere in or near your house. So I got super paranoid and spent a couple of nights around sunset up on the roof trying to determine if there was anything open and nestable up there. I didn't find bats, but I did find out that a jerk squirrel was helping himself to the hotel that was my soffits. So much so that the soffit was acually starting to droop under the weight of all of his jerk nesting materials.

So down they came!
Before:

After:


So now I've ordered a Metabo Paint Shaver which I understand to be very similar to the Paint Shaver Pro. And I'll give resstoring the eaves and siding/priming/painting a go up there in small scale! Will also have to add the detailing back to the corbel that was cut off when vinyl was installed - much better than I was expecting though.

[Don M]

Wow what a difference in appearance! Very nice.

[dpkmpy8]

Very Nice! I chased three raccoon out of our attic in the country. Not fun, but at least your house looked better after opening it up. Mine looked like a 70's ranch that sneezed too hard.

[Mick_VT]

Looks a million times better already!

[SkipW]

Love the exposed rafter tails!

Looks much better now, IMHO

[Sara]

Mine looked like a 70's ranch that sneezed too hard.

That's a hilarious visual image. Thanks for that!

It definitely looks a bit worse for wear when you get closer - but at least all of that plastic and vinyl baked some of the lead paint off for me. I'll be getting up there for some majoy prep work here soonish.

[dpkmpy8]

Sara,
I wished I had taken a picture. The aluminum soffit was pulled loose from the side of the house, but not the fascia or vice versa, and there was all sorts of grass and other squirrel nests dangling as well. Quite a mess. I went through with a demo axe and just started pulling it down to get all the nesting stuff out of there. It was a sight to say the least.

[raine]

Well this brings back memories. My last old house was just like yours . The front porch was closed in. It had steel siding. It was made into a triplex and we inherited the tenents. They knew of the bat(s) and told us of one episode of one being in the upstairs apartment. This did not bother them.
So when I started hearing scratching on the main floor exterior walls , like you, paranoia set in.
We watched at sundown to see where they were coming out of and never seen them.
We hired Batman to come in and inspect and hang socks with mothballs in them in the attics.
He seen some droppings but no bats.
Nothing really worked as we always encountered evidence of a bat or two.
The last I remembered was my spouse was on the roof in the corner of the dormer ( I dont remember why) and a bat flew out at him.
We sold to one of the tenents and a condition of the sale was to put up soffits and facia. I dont know if that helped or not.

[Casey]

Why stop there? take it all off. It looks like it ought to.
Casey

[Gothichome]

Sara, Gothichome has the same issues, a couple of corners in the eaves have been boxed with aluminium. Squirrel nests in both. Removed what I could but have not removed the aluminum. Afraid to open up that repair till I'm ready to do the repair properly.