An older red-brick Warrington house given a new roofline: white UPVC fascia and soffit along the eaves with black half-round guttering hung off it on the same visit.
The roofline is the run of board that closes the gap between the top of the wall and the edge of the roof, and it carries the gutter. On an older red-brick house like this one in Warrington it was originally timber, and timber at that height takes the worst of the weather with the least attention paid to it.
The photograph was taken looking straight up the wall with the ladder still resting against the brick. What it shows is the finished run: a white UPVC fascia with the soffit tucked in behind it, held in a clean straight line from one end of the wall to the other, with black half-round guttering brought back on below it.
Painted timber fascia works for as long as the paint holds. Once it opens up at a joint or behind a gutter bracket, water sits in the grain and the board goes soft from the back, which is why rot is usually well advanced before anything shows from the ground. The gutter is bolted to that board, so a soft fascia means a gutter that sags, runs the wrong way and spills down the brickwork.
We take the old boards off rather than cap over them. Capping is quicker and it hides whatever is underneath, including the rot; stripping back means the rafter feet and the end of the roof covering can be looked at before anything new is fixed to them. Any soft timber found at that stage gets dealt with while the roofline is open, because it will not be reachable again once the boards are on.
New fascia is fixed through to sound timber along its whole length so the gutter has something solid to hang from. The soffit closes the underside, and it is worth getting the ventilation right at this point: air needs to get in at the eaves and out at the ridge, or the roof space holds moisture. UPVC holds its colour and does not need repainting the way the old timber did, and the white against weathered red brick is a sharp line that shows up any bow in the run, so it has to be set out properly.
The guttering went straight back on the new fascia while the ladder was still up. Half-round in black is a common choice on brick of this age, and doing the gutter in the same visit means the brackets are spaced to the new board and the falls are set from scratch rather than inherited from the old run. There is more about this work on our UPVC roofline page and our Warrington fascia and soffit page.
Flaking paint and dark staining on the board, a gutter that has dropped at one end, green growth on the brickwork below a joint, or birds getting in where the soffit has opened up — all of them point the same way. If any of that sounds like your house, get in touch and we will come and look at it and give you a free quote with no obligation.
Tell us what the roof is doing and roughly where you are. We will come and look, and you get a written price before anything starts.
