Painting Fascia boards

Painting fascia boards is an essential part of property maintenance, the fascia board is the part just under the roof and the area the guttering is screwed too. I go into more detail as to what fascia boards, soffits and bargeboards in my post Painting fascia and soffits and bargeboards.

In this post I am only talking about fascia boards, a recent job I was working on prompted me to write this post. One of the jobs on a recent exterior job I was doing was to paint the fascia boards, now this is a very typical part of a job for me so am used to preparing and painting them.

On one length of fascia board an aerial or satellite cable had been clipped to the bottom face of the board, so what’s the problem you maybe asking, well nothing except you could be shortening the life of the board. Why, you ask, well if the paint degrades behind the cable allowing water to get in you will quickly get rotten boards, the cable hold the water on the board longer as the water gets between the cable and the fascia, trapping it there far longer than if the water was allowed to run off.

So if you need to run cabling run it behind the fascia board or along the wall so you do not trap water against the fascia.

Square and round edges

Another thing to look out for are square edges on the bottom of the fascia, the paint can not cover a 90° sharp angle as you typically get on a fascia board, you may notice the paint starts to deteriate here first and may even peel and lift exposing bare wood, as described in my post How to get paint to adhere to edges of woodwork. In this situation I always rub the square edge into a slight rounded one, this will allow the paint to cover far better and last longer, so your fascia boards should last longer and it may even prolong the amount of time you need to re-paint your fascia boards.

Just a couple of tips for painting your fascia boards, but they may help the fascia and paint on them last longer.