Roofs, Soffits, and Eaves for the Dummy Homeowner

Here's what eaves are, Vic!

From time to time even the Antisocial Network's DIYer in chief needs a little help with some home repair or maintenance task she's never attempted before. That usually means a trip to the bookshelf, where there's a DIY section that rivals that of many small-town libraries (we've seen it). If that doesn't work, though, she'll reluctantly turn to the 'net, where you can be sure there are hundreds if not thousands of blog posts and videos. Choosing the best isn't a matter that should be left up to google search, however, because you just might run across utter bull – and that's no help. By "utter bull," we mean the kind of rubbish posted by Victor Fonseca to eHow.com in "How to Repair Eaves and Roofs."

Given the 300-500 word format of most Demand Media answers and the extraordinary breadth of the topic, we didn't expect much from Victor. We though perhaps an outline of procedures... what we didn't expect was complete and utter garbage (although the guy was a PolySci major in college – need we say more?) Fonseca started off in a hole with this inane statement:

"Although there is a great deal of hullabaloo concerning roof tiles and replacing them, little is said of the importance of repairing warped or sagging eaves. This trim of wood along the edge of a roof, though often neglected, is a key element to the overall visual appeal of a home."

Based on that "trim of wood along the edge of a roof" bit, we immediately recognized that Victor had no idea what eaves are. What Fonseca described here (we think) is the fascia board, since "eaves" refers to the overhang where a roof meets the outer wall, not a "trim." Our suspicions are borne out by more of Victor's unschooled statements, including this complete and utter bullshit: "Purchase replacement eaves at your local hardware store or lumberyard. To save time, have the hardware store or lumberyard staff cut the replacement eaves for you." Huh! you can buy "replacement eaves" at your local hardware!? What a concept! So we checked with Lowes, Home Depot and even Amazon – nope, no "replacement eaves" in anyone's catalog. Not content to merely publish his utter bullshit about repairing eaves (he never mentioned fascia or soffits...). Fonseca moved on to roofing shingles, instructing his readers to

"Pull up any damaged shingles with a pry bar, using the pry bar to leverage the shingle up, exposing the two corner nails holding it in place. With enough leverage, you can pry the nails up with the shingles..."

...and explaining that they must then make certain that "the plastic tarp underneath the shingle is still in tact [sic]" before they "Hammer [a new shingle] in place with 8D nails--one nail in each top corner." Dumbass, you nail down shingles with 10- or 11-gauge roofing nails, not 8-penny nails of unstated description – and more than just two!

What's most interesting is that Fonseca's lone reference (long-since deprecated how-to advice from Realtor.com) indeed breaks down the difference between eaves, fascia and soffit – and says nothing at all about shingles, although it does suggest that the DIYer "Tack two 8d nails at each [rafter]," which suggests that Victor thinks "soffit" and "shingle" are synonymous. We think that's more than enough evidence that Fonseca deserves to be our Dumbass of the Day...

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