Patching a Varmint Hole in House Siding
by JM
4 Materials
Some kind of filthy, crawling beast chewed into the side of our house. I blame the neighbors (more on that in the blog post). Either way, I gotta fix it. We have some wicked things in Arizona that I prefer not to have colonize the attic.
Since the siding is created from a 4x8 T-111 wooden sheet, I didn't want to tear off a big chunk and pull all three electrical conduits and their wiring out to replace it. I measured the width of one of the aesthetic "planks" formed in the sheet and cut a thin piece of plywood to size.
Rather than measure the roof angle, I transcribed the angle of the roof-line cut using a compass.
Once I lopped the angled tip off the board, I screwed it to the face of the wall, over the hole. It's a temporary step, just to hold it in place.
Have you ever used on of these? An Oscillating Multi-Tool is like power scissors for cutting wood. It uses a thin, vibrating blade that slices a narrow, controllable line. Mine is a handy cordless model. I keep finding new uses for it.
I buzzed the saw along the edge of the board, tracing along the edge, following it like a pattern.
The damaged piece as well as my fresh cut plank popped free in one, screwed together chunk.
I still don't know what gnawed that hole.
I slipped the patch into the perfectly sized hole and screwed it into place. There was framing behind it to hit with the screws, otherwise I would have had to add some strips of wood.
A bit of caulk over the seams and the recessed screw heads sealed it up.
I primed it to seal everything up and help protect it from the desert sun.
I took the scrap to Home Depot and had the faded paint color matched with their magical gizmo. A couple coats of decent paint blended the repair right in.
Done deal! You can hardly tell there was a patch done. I painted a couple of the conduits as well.
The cool thing about this project is the act that I never had to crawl in the attic to do the repair. I did get up their in the beginning to look for evidence of the creature, but didn't see anything. Check out the blog post for more info,... and why I blame the neighbors.
Comments
Join the conversation
2 of 3 comments
-
Been there, done that. Nice repair. When we lived in Chandler, AZ we had birds (we guess) get in and we must have missed one or more visitors plugged the holes and because some time later near a hollow dividing wall we had maggots coming up through the carpet on a humid day. It was a night mare. We got them killed and sucked out after I punched holes into the wall and bomb it. I never walked bare foot in that house the rest of the time we lived there. I always suggest, temp cover, bomb, wait, then final cover up.
-
Awesome fix!! Thanks for sharing this!!
Frequently asked questions
Have a question about this project?