Wood Rot Repair

Wood rot repair means cutting out soft, decayed exterior wood and replacing or filling it before the area is primed and painted. Safe Choice Painting repairs rot on fascia, soffits, window and door trim, sills and siding boards. Small spots get epoxy filler, and longer runs get new wood. We do not repair structural framing.

Where does rot show up on houses here?

Rot starts wherever water sits on wood or soaks into it. The most common spots we find:

• Fascia boards behind clogged or overflowing gutters.
• Bottom corners of window and door trim, where water runs down and sits on the sill.
• Siding boards near the ground, by sprinklers, or under a roof line with no gutter.
• Soffits where a roof leak or a bad drip edge lets water in from above.
• Porch posts and trim at the bottom, where they meet the floor.

May is the wettest month of the year in our area, by NOAA's 1991 to 2020 normals: about 5.72 inches in Ardmore, 5.64 in Gainesville and 4.86 in Denton. Spring is when hidden leaks show up as fresh soft spots.

Why does wood rot?

Rot is a fungus, and it needs water to grow. The USDA Forest Products Laboratory's Wood Handbook explains that serious decay happens only when wood is wetter than its fiber saturation point, about 30 percent moisture. Fully air-dried wood stays at or under about 20 percent, which gives a safe margin, and wood kept that dry will not decay. Humid air alone is not enough. Rain, leaks, condensation or soil contact are what get wood wet enough to rot. That is why every repair includes finding where the water came from.

Epoxy filler or replacement?

• Epoxy filler suits small, shallow spots on trim and sills, where the rest of the board is sound. The soft wood is dug out, a consolidant hardens the edges, and a two-part filler is shaped and sanded to match. It saves original trim on older homes.
• Replacement suits long runs of soft fascia, siding boards that crumble, and trim that is soft through. The bad section is cut out and new wood or a paintable trim board goes in, with ends primed and joints sealed.

At the walkthrough we probe each suspect area and list every repair in the estimate, so you know what is filler and what is new wood.

Why painting over rot does not work

Paint does not stop rot. It seals water in and hides the damage for a short time. Within a season or two, the soft wood swells, the paint cracks and peels, and the rot has spread further along the board. If paint is peeling in the same spot every year, there is often soft wood under it. Our answer on why exterior paint peels covers other causes.

What we repair and what we do not

We repair trim, siding, fascia and soffit before painting them. We do not repair structural framing: rafters, studs, sill plates, joists or beams. If an estimate finds framing damage behind a rotted board, we point it out so you can bring in a framing contractor before we finish the job. On decks, porch floors and fences, we point out soft boards so you can decide what to do; those boards are not part of our rot repair.

Keeping rot from coming back

• Prime every cut end of new wood before it goes up, since end grain soaks up water fastest.
• Caulk joints at trim and corner boards, but leave the laps in siding open to drain.
• Keep gutters clear and make sure downspouts carry water away.
• Aim sprinklers away from siding and trim.
• Repaint on time. Paint that is cracked or worn through lets water in.

Older trim and siding are where we find the most rot. In Ardmore about 63 percent of homes were built before 1980, and in Lone Grove about 40 percent, by Census estimates. See exterior painting in Ardmore.

Painting after the repair

New wood and filler are primed, then painted with the rest of the trim so the repair disappears. Our trim, fascia and soffit painting page and wood siding painting page cover that work, and siding painting covers other siding types.

Nearby

• Exterior painting
• Trim, fascia and soffit painting
• Porch floor painting