Gimme a Brake!

Yesterday we rented a big machine called a metal brake. We used it to bend the sheet metal that makes the trim for the siding on our house, also called the "fascia". We have been unable to find any professional to do this for us since we have a relatively small job (about 70 feet of missing fascia). The contractors are only interested in big jobs right now making big money. So, hubby and I have been doing the siding ourselves a little at a time.

In case any of my neighbors are reading this and want to know how we did it: We got a roll of "PVC trim coil" from Home Depot. The store in Slidell did not have anymore in the color white, so I went to the Covington store to get it. Lowe's doesn't have it at all. It was not expensive - about $60 for 50 feet. Then we rented the metal brake from Home Depot (about $60 for 24 hours). They also rent them at Tuff Equipment Rentals in Slidell for a lot less, but you need to call and reserve it since they were all out for this week. The brake is about 10 and a half feet long and very very heavy. It fit into my minivan only because we took all the seats out before we went. It still hung out of the van a couple of feet, so we tied the door down.

The metal trim coil cuts easily with a big pair of tin snips. The whole job was definitely a two person job. You need two people to maneuver the long strips of metal into place. If you bend them at all, you've ruined it! We cut the metal into 10' strips and marked off where we needed to make the bends, and which side to bend them. We practiced bending it on a short piece first. Once we figured out what we were doing, it went fairly quickly. When we were done with the bends for each 10 foot section, I would proudly shout, "Look what we made!" to my husband's embarassment.

Installing the fascia onto the house was not as simple as it looked. It was hard to line them up with each other perfectly, and they didn't quite match the existing fascia which has faded a little with age. So, we ended up replacing more of it than we thought to make it look right. We also had to borrow a very tall ladder from another neighbor to get to parts of it. You need two people to install - one person to hold one end, and the other to hammer it in place. Don't hammer the metal!

The whole job took us a good part of the day. It was a lot of work for just a little fascia, but now it is done and it's one more thing we can cross off our list, along with the repair of our attic insulation which we did the day before (another job that was not as easy as it looked!). We also discovered quite a bit of displaced insulation in the roof soffet that had been driven there by the storm. Imagine us on the roof with our shop vaccum sucking out the roof soffets so they will vent properly before we could install the fascia. We were quite a sight. I'll post a picture of the finished fascia job later. By the time we finished, it was too dark to take a picture.

Today, Hubby went into his office in New Orleans to retrieve some data from another computer that he needs for his Neuroscience conference this month. His building STILL does not have any power. Supposedly they were going to have the power on last Monday. Officially, the university still does not have a date to reopen the building to allow his lab back to work, although they expect him to be back teaching Janary 2. He's hoping it will be soon.

I cleaned out the garage and stowed all the Halloween decorations and dragged them back up to the newly insulated attic. I'm exhausted from all the physical labor we've been doing around here. Tomorrow I am going to take a break and work at my desk instead!