Woodpecker Frustration

When you hear woodpeckers drilling at your house, you know you have at least one problem: woodpeckers. The ruin your morning coffee experience with loud chirping and staccato jack hammer noises that resonate in the walls of your precious craftsman style bungalow that you're signing away half your monthly salary just to live in. If woodpeckers are on your list of awful things in life beside Yugos, bears, LISP, burnt eggs, and children, they really should be. You will feel more complete knowing you have a full list of things to intensely dislike.

Another important point about woodpeckers is that they are usually just there because there is something else that is very wrong and annoying you that you just don't know about yet. It is highly likely that the thing that is drawing the woodpeckers is also a problem, and often is the root of your pecker frustrations.

For example: this was the root of my woodpecker frustrations: rotten trim.

Looks lovely, doesn't it? The wood peckers, arriving on springs coat tales, were having a blast boring in to it, plucking out great pieces of fibreglass, and chirping up a storm.

If anyone in town finds random bits of fibreglass around it wasn't us, I swear.

When we first bought the house, there were pronounced problems with trees touching and growing into it. A high priority was cutting them back, but the damage was still done, and much of the trim has large holes worn in it. Additionally, I found that the gutter on that part of the house wasn't flashed correctly, so water drained behind it, across the trim, instead of into it. Note: the drip edge terminates in the gutter!

Tired of constant pecking, I crowbarred off the offending bits, inspected the damange, then stapled heavy plastic over the problem while I contemplatd what to do.

Gutter removal. Aluminium gutters are quite light. The major problem is getting behind the nail head to pull them off.

A blownout picture: at least the ends of the rafters are not rotted,and the decking is in great shape.

You can seen where an old squirrel nest used to be on the left. Center are the supports I made for holding the new trimwork to the rafters. They held each piece of trim in place while I aligned and screwed them in.

New trim boards. These are made of PVC and should never rot. Because my car can only handle 8 foot boards, I had to use two pieces for everything, which complicated the project. That and the cellar door.

Replacement cleat. It's really tough doing a good job creating a new cleat. It's very tough to work out where to install it on the wall. The geometry is simple. The requisite measurements standing on a ladder are not. And the brick wall is bowed. Thus, I'm pretty sure that the horizontal parts are not quite planer. You won't notice, right?

Offsets installed to hold the horizontals

Another view of the offsets.

Horizontals installed. The bowed wall meant that the sides of the 1x12s had to be shaved and cut (as much as 2 inches in places) to fit. Any residual gaps got caulked.

Another view. The outside corner ended up being the summation of all the offsize cuts and rounding errors.There's an extension off the cleat for the inside trim at the end of the house (the darker wood). There's also a small panel where the combination of the 1x12s (which were 6' long) didn't quite reach. Did I say "thank goodness for caulk" yet? If not, I should.

Thank goodness for caulk.

All buttoned up and read for caulk and paint.

Painted and caulked.

See! I told you it would look great.

Gutter reinstalled.

If I had to do it again, I would have done a few things differently:

1. I would have spent the money for PVC all the way around. After I found out how easy it was to work with, and really got into the pain of fiddling with the ladders around the cellar hatch, I determined that never having to work there again would be great and high durability PVC would help.
2. Sand all boards before installation and use primer before painting, the fit and finish will be way better.
3. Consider full length pieces wherever possible. It means fewer measure/cut processes and it just looks better without seams. 
4. Next time, when in the hardware store holding the big crowbar, thinking "this will make getting that gutter/trim/board/nail/woodpecker out", i'm going to buy the godamn bar, put it in the car, drive home, and wreck things. I'm not going to poke around with a hammer, a small prybar, and a iron pike for 3 hours.