No more squirrels!

Repeat readers of this blog will find in this post not only an alliterative description of themselves but also a long-forgotten project completed with help from a remarkably recurring source.

The project: fix the hole in the porch soffit.

The gift that keeps on giving: 1-inch square scrap wood.

After removing the temporary covering (particle-board - a bad idea in retrospect since water can, and does, sneak under the eave) I took my saws-all to the eave to remove the worn or rotted board sections and create a fairly square opening:

Now for the return of the scrap wood. As you can see, the beams - and some of the plywood under the tar-paper - were also suffering from rot and wear. The 1"-square sticks made for great extensions on which to attach the new eave board, and the backing board behind the gutter. I miter'd the near end of the sticks at a slight angle to roughly match the slope of the beams and allow the backing board to sit straight.

Now came a long series of cut-to-fit measuring, remeasuring, cutting, positioning, recutting, and so on. I would have liked to do this with only two boards - eave and backing - but the eave is at least 8" deep. While I could have bought a wider plank, I decided to rip two pieces of one-by as needed, miter the right end, and cross my fingers. This took a little longer than it might have otherwise, but it saved me four bucks and a trip to the lumber yard.

The backing board was more of a challenge. I don't know how the original board and the trim on the peak to the right of this hole originally fit together - the boards were rotted and/or worn back several inches - so I needed to dig out a tool I hadn't used in years - my trusty grade-school protractor:

Remember, this is all cut-to-fit, so make a cut, see if it fits, then cut more - I made the longer 45-degree cut (from the top of the board heading down towards the right) first and, after wrangling the piece up and down the ladder several times, decided there was no need to make the second, lower, shorter, 45-degree cut; doing so might have exposed a bit of the eave boards, actually.

Some Abatron putty to smooth out the transitions:

Paint it, and let the squirrels roost somewhere else:

Only (only!) two things left to do on the porch - rehang the gutter (that's going to be a big post) and finish painting the ceiling. This is gonna look so pretty...