How much pitch can a 3′ soffit have before it’s noticable?
I’m finishing my first house and it’s time to put siding on (6″ smartside lap). The eves, 3 feet wide, are going to be enclosed with smartside soffit. This is how I realized that somehow the elevation of my sub-fascia, and the roof itself, is uneven. The house is a simple rectangle 50′ x 26′. One corner of the roof/sub-fascia is 3/4″ higher than the other corners, which are almost perfectly co-planar and level.
If I make the soffits perfectly level, the reveal on the top piece of siding would drop 3/4″ across 26 feet one one side and 50 feet on the other. Or I could make the soffit sloped by 3/4″ over 3′ in some places and maintain perfect reveals across the house. But I don’t really know which one of these options will be less noticeable. I guess I could also shim out the sub-fascia to be 3/4″ wider but that seems pretty crazy and more noticeable.
Anyway, I would really appreciate any advice on how to solve this problem. Thanks very much.
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Replies
Why don’t you just keep the reveal and hide the slope in the 26’ direction
3' is a nice wide eave. What is the current state of your soffit framing? Do you have a picture? I'm guessing you are going to be running 2*4s from the facia back to the wall? Have those already been installed? It seems like you could correct the error at that stage. by making the soffit framing level In other words, your soffit framing will not be perfectly aligned with the bottom of the sub facia across the entire 26' and 50' spans but that won't really matter and you will cover it up with a facia board anyway. If you make the facia board level as well, then you might be able to push this variation into the space above the gutter that no one sees. Hard to envision without a picture or drawings.
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You can steer a couple of courses a siding say an 1/8" at a time. Over that distance you will simply not notice, just be careful around wide windows as the siding lines need to be parallel to the window.
You can also have different reveal at the top. Again, over these distance you won't notice the reveal is say 4.25" at one side and 5" on the other side. The bigger the reveal the less noticeable it is.
One more option is to add an extra trim over the top trim, similar to a shoe mold, to hide the gap.
You can use one, two or all three above depending on how much gap you are dealing with.