SHED BUILDING VIDEO 11 OF 15
How to Install Fascia Boards and Tongue & Groove Soffits
Learn how to install fascia boards and soffit materials. Step-by-step guide and video with jigs & tips for installation, tight miters and professional results.
Taught by Henry Reinders, a professional builder, renovator and woodworker with more than 45 years of hands-on experience.
Popular Video Chapters
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0:10 Choose materials and prepare the fascia jig
Choose straight fascia and soffit materials, then prepare the support jig used for one-person installation.
3:59 Measure and miter the fascia boards
Measure the roof edges and cut accurate fascia miters so the corners close tightly.
8:35 Clamp, align and attach the fascia
Henry shows how to clamp, align and attach the fascia while keeping its edge straight along the roof.
14:04 Add the 1×2 fascia trim detail
Add the 1×2 trim detail to deepen the fascia profile and cover the installation fasteners.
17:33 Prepare tongue-and-groove soffit boards
Prepare straight tongue-and-groove boards and prefinish visible surfaces before soffit installation.
22:16 Use the jig to install the first boards
Use the jig to support each board, mark its length and hold it tight against the fascia.
26:20 Blind-nail the tongues and continue the soffit
Blind-nail through the tongue and continue the soffit while keeping every joint fully seated.
31:28 Finish the gable soffits and peak
Henry explains how to fit the gable soffits and close the boards neatly at the roof peak.
WANT TO BUILD THIS SHED?
Complete Plans When You’re Ready
Use the video tutorials to help build the shed. Use the plans for exact dimensions, drawings, material lists, construction sequence and the included Excel costing sheet.
Shed Fascia and Soffit Quick Reference
Straight boards and some prep work up front make the miters and nailing far less fiddly.
Key specs at a glance
- Pre-finishing: two coats on fascia and soffit boards before installation
- Fascia jig: supports and aligns long boards for one-person installation
- Board quality: straight and equal width for tight equal corners
- Soffit nailing: driven at an angle through the tongue, hidden by the next board
- Ventilation shown: this uninsulated shed does not use a continuous soffit vent. Gable soffits are easier to install and sufficient
Common mistakes to avoid
- Painting fascia and soffit boards after installation instead of pre-finishing
- Skipping the fascia jig and trying to align long boards without support when working alone
- Using boards of uneven width, which produces unsightly corners
- Nailing soffit boards straight through instead of angled through the tongue
- Assuming ventilation is always required, even on an uninsulated shed
PROJECT RESOURCES
Need a Budget? Price the Project Before You Build
Download the free Excel costing sheet to enter current local prices, provided for both shed plan sizes and both old and recent Excel formats (just in case you need the older file format).
Frequently Asked Questions
Questions are based on the topics covered in this video and common questions Henry receives from customers via email.
Why should fascia and soffit materials be pre-finished?
Two coats applied before installation protect all surfaces and avoid difficult paint cutting-in after the boards are installed. Watch at 0:10
What does the fascia jig do?
It supports and helps align long fascia boards so one person can clamp, mark, cut and fasten it accurately. Watch at 0:10
Why must fascia boards be straight and equal in width?
Straight boards make it much easier to produce tight miters and a uniform roof edge. Watch at 3:59
How are tongue-and-groove soffit nails concealed?
Drive the nails at an angle through the tongue just above the groove so the next board covers them. Watch at 26:20
Is soffit ventilation always required?
No, it is not required for an uninsulated shed, but gable vents can be easily added and our plans include framing details for this. If storing fuels or equipment with fuel in it, vents are a good idea to help prevent a buildup of fumes, especially in hot weather. Watch at 26:20
Complete Video Transcript
Use the expandable transcript to read Henry’s instructions found in this video – with timestamps linked to each section in the video.
Open the complete video transcript
Welcome to CountryLifeProjects.com. I’m Henry Reinders. This is video 11 of 15 in our shed project. In this video, I’m going to be showing you how to do the fascia boards and the set material. In this shed, we’re not insulating it. So, we haven’t used a vent strip, a continuous vent strip on our Eve Sophet. However, if you do want to do that, we do have the diagrams in our ebook and uh we also have some really cool jigs that allow you to do this on your own if you have to. So, that said, let’s get started. This video here is where we install our fascia trim and also our set material. The sheathing
has been done first and we haven’t actually put on our SmartSide panels on the sides here. You might think that’s kind of odd, but there’s a reason for it. And as long as you keep your internal bracing on the inside of the shed, you don’t have to worry about these panels not being here. Now, the reason we’ve done this is when you’re putting your set material up here, especially if you’re using tongue and groove like we are, it can be very difficult if your panels already in place to nail in here. But the way we’re doing this, you have that freedom to be able to nail your set material on. Makes it much easier. Once that’s done, then we’ll put our smart
sight panel on and we’ll continue to finish the shed. Now, if you’re working on your own, when you’re doing your fascia trim, it’s very difficult to have your boards up here and try and measure them and mark them off properly. So, I have a jig that I’ve devised down here that allows you to put your material up here. Now, if this is your fascia material here, you’ll be sliding it through. This is a quarter inch bigger in height than your material. You would slide it through. You would have your miter on this end. You would line it up. You would clamp it. We’ll go into more detail on that later. And then,
uh, we’re going to put another one up here. Now, the jig itself is this one here. We’re going to be using two. It’s very simple. We have this plan in our ebook. So, it shows you the exact measurements. It’s 3/4 in material. Where to put the 2×4. It’s very simple to install. I’ve also got a mark here which gives us our depth plus a/4 inch to give us room to work with our material. About halfway down the roof, you put that on that line there and just simply screw it in place. Just make sure it’s very well secured because you’re going to use it for alignment here for your roof.
Screw the bottom part through into your subfasia and just pop another screw up here just to keep it flat. That’s it. With two of those in there, you can slide your material in and it can just sit there. You don’t need anybody else holding it. We also we come to the front of our shed here. You’ll see that I have blocking on the corner here and all the way across to the other corner. We’re going to be using that to make it easy to align our fascia boards on the front here. When you’re working on your own, that can be a little bit difficult. We’re also doing the fascia before we do the soft
material because it will be butdding up against it, but also with this open, we can use clamps to hold our fascia boards on while we’re marking them out and also when we’re installing them. So, we’re going to get to uh that next. I want to show you something about material first. Okay, we’ve got our material laid out here for our fascia trim. We have 1×6 cedar here. Uh you can use what you like. uh cedar I prefer myself. It’s uh very durable. We have 1 by two which we will be placing on the cedar trim just to increase our depth and our profile. Makes it look a little bit nicer. These are 8 footers. These are 12footers 1x six. We have our set material
here which we’ve prefinished so that when it’s up there we don’t have to do anything else. It’s got two coats on it. If you like a perfectly clear finish with no discoloring, I highly recommend the Verane diamond wood finish. It’s great stuff. I use it all the time, both inside and out. It leaves a perfect finish. And one last thing, when you’re picking out your 1x six’s, be very careful to uh select flat material. If you get a bow in your material like this, when you’re doing your miters on your corners, it’s going to be almost impossible to get those tight. So, try and find nice flat material, nice straight material. The job will be much easier. Now,
I’ve just pointed those things out. Uh, we’re going to miter, preiter one end of our 1x six. We’re going to be doing the sides of the shed first. So, we’ll go there next and uh get rolling with the uh fascia boards. Okay, we’ve mitered the one end on our fascia board. I’ve also put a clamp here and a clamp down there so that when I have this positioned where I want it, they’re handy. Now, with the jig here, you just simply slide this in. Just be careful with the mitered edge. It’s delicate. We’re just going to lay that there. As you can see, I can let it go. Come down to this end. And you slide this up till your miter
is just a hair past the subfascia on your end gable or your set. Clamp it in place. That’ll prevent it from moving back or this way while you mark the other end out. I’ve also pushed it tight up to my corner block. So when I lift it up, it will be positioned right. And on this end, you just simply have to bring it up, push it tight to your corner block here. Just clamp it. Take a look down. Make sure hasn’t dropped on the other end. On the back here, just draw a line down. We do our 45. We do it from the back. Drop your line down. That’s it. We’ll cut that 45 and then we’ll start our front piece.
Okay, I’ve cut the miter on the end of this fascia board here. Everything lines up nicely. Now, it’s important to note that when you’re cutting your rafters, your blocking for your ladders, that cutting them 90° is really important because it’ll affect things at this stage of the process here. If it’s not cut 90° and you put your fascia boards together, they might be out of line like that. So, if they are slightly out, let’s say this was out just a little bit that way. you’re putting this up here, there’s nothing you could do to fix it. When you mark your line, take the longest length to cut your miter. And then you might have a little bit of this facial
board sitting out this way, but we’re putting glue on our corners here. So once that dries, that will be secure. You won’t have to worry about it. The other thing when you put these together, you’ll notice that this board here is slightly wider than that one here. If you have that, you may want to rip all your fascia boards to the same width before you start. So that when you do put them together and everything’s finished, this will be flush on the bottom here. We’re going to let this piece sit here now that we have it cut to size. We’re going to do the front fascia board here. We’re going to cut the miter at the top first, clamp it in place,
and then we’ll mark the back of it. I’m going to do that now, and I’ll be right back. Show you how we do that. I’ve cut a 30° miter on the top of our fascia board here. I’m going to line it up with the peak of the gable here. And you’ll notice that I have it pushed tight to my blocking. All I have to do is clamp it in place and I can go down there, mark it off, make sure it’s not going to move. Double check that you’re on the peak and we’re good to go there. Come back to our corner over here. Hold it up tight to your block.
Look in behind. Make sure. And then just run your mark down here. Remove it. Cut your miter. And then we’re going to put these corners together. Okay, we’ve cut our front fascia board. Just want to point something out. This piece has a slight curve to it and it’s proving difficult to pull it tight to this block here, which is flush with our sheathing on our roof. Don’t worry about that. If you have a little bit of that, it’s not a big deal. We’re going to be putting a 1 by two trim on here and we can take up that adjustment there. And because we’re using 1 by two and we’re using cedar,
we can also use a screw on the top part of our board. So, we’re going to do that about every 12 in. We’re going to stay back from the corner about 6 in. And then we’ll be nailing our corners together and be nailing near the bottom here. And we’re going to put glue here, glue here. We’re going to glue our miter as well. So, I’m going to grab my glue gun and we’ll do that next. Okay, we’re going to glue our fascia boards. This one’s already been done. I have it clamped in place and put glue on the back or on the back of this one here about three 4 in back be fine.
And we’re going to put a small bead toward the back of the miter here. This will prevent your fascia boards from coming apart. Now, our first screw is going to be near the top. Again, our 1 by two will cover this. Keep it back about 6 in so it doesn’t split. Do the same thing on this side. Keep it tight to the top. We’re just going to tap that over a little bit. Just going to find a block. Make sure they’re lined up nicely. And we’re going to check to see if it’s flush, which it is. Flush over here. So, I can put another one in. Now, on the lower portion, we’re an inch and a
half down from our subfacia. So about two inches up. Use finishing nails about every 12 to 16 in apart. I prefer about 12. You don’t really need one right at the corner. We have our glue behind there. Then for the corners, we’re going to put a nail each way. That’s going to help it hold together. Nail it all the way home. Is rough cedar. It’ll dent very easy. and just counter synink them a little bit. And do the same thing near the top, preferably in behind where your 1 by two will cover later. So the less nails you see, the better. Now, this what it effectively does is this piece can’t pull that way because we have this
nail going through here. With this nail going this way, this piece can’t come that way. Plus, the addition of the glue, the likelihood of this coming apart, pretty slim. We’re going to finish nailing and screwing fascia board that way. this fascia board. Then we’re going to do the other side. I’ll show you how to do that when we get there. So, I’ll finish this off now. Okay, we’ve cut our second gable fascia board. Should note that uh both of these can come out of one 12T length. I like using the same piece. Make sure everything lines up nicely. This piece right now is about 6 in longer. So, we got lots of room to play with. You want to put it in place. Make sure it’s tight to
your blocks. Check your miter. If it’s good, clamp it in place. Put another one down here. These quick clamps are great for this. You can use them one-handed. Now I’m going to go down mark off our line for our miter. Just push that board out of the way. Make sure it’s tight to the block here. Mark your line on the back. I’m going to go ahead cut this miter. We’re going to finish off the remainder of our 1x six spacia boards. Once we’re done with that, we’re leaving our blocks in place. We’re going to do the 1x two. And I’ll show you how to do that. It’s uh pretty straightforward.
Very similar. Just a couple more things that I want to show you when we get to that point. So, I’ll go ahead and finish that up now and we’ll be back shortly. We’re going to start our 1x 2 trim. I have this piece here already secured in place. This corner is 45. But over here, most 1x 2 comes in 8t lengths. It’s hard to find longer lengths. If you can, great. But if you can’t, you’re going to have to make a join along the length of your fascia board on the sides. The best way to do that is to have an angle on one piece and an angle on the other piece. Exactly the same. So
when they’re joined together, when you’re looking straight on, if they ever do shrink a little bit, you won’t see that line as much. Now, this is the way I have this set up is very handy because what I’m going to do is I’m going to push this piece into here, which I’ll do now. I’m going to push it up. Push it into place. That locks it into place. And if you look over here at the end, I’m just going to clamp it in place. I’m going to get down, double check the joint over here. Yeah, it’s nice and tight. So, I can go ahead and mark off my end piece.
In the same way that we marked off our 1x six fascia boards, in the same way that we marked off our 1x six fascia boards, we’re going to mark off the back of the 1 by 2. And that’s where we’ll make our 45° cut. I’m going to pull that down. Now, before we secure this piece after I cut it, we want to mark off the one by two that we’re going to put on the front fascia boards and the back. So, we’ll take a look at that next. Okay, we’re going to do the 1 by two on the fascia boards here. Before you secure the 1 by two on your side fascia boards, you want to get these measured first. And this is where our
blocks come in handy. I’ve already got this cut at 30°. I’ve lined it up with the 1x six facer board. I’m just going to clamp it on in place. And then I can go down to the corner. Mark that off exactly the same way we did our fascia the back. And I’ll cut that at a 45. We’ll do that on both sides. and then we will put them in place. Okay, we’ve cut our 1 by two for the peak here for this end. We’ve got the 45. It’s all secured. I put a tiny bit of glue behind this end here as well as at the peak. And we’re going to do the same thing with our 1 by two down here. I’m just going to
put a dab on the end here where it joins to the piece further down. I’m going to put a little bit here and just a dab on the corner. Doesn’t need much. And a little bit on the back of here. We’re going to take this piece. And you’ll notice on our jig that I’ve put a piece of plywood across there for our 1 by two. Going to slide it in to our miter over there. Temporarily. I’m just going to clamp this to make sure that joint down there is tight. Also, so I can move my ladder. Yeah, we’re nice and tight down here. So, I can go ahead and nail off this corner.
You want to nail about every 12 in. Make sure it’s flush with the sheathing. You want to set those a little bit with your nail punch. Now on the corner here, same thing we did with the fascia board with a smaller finishing nail. These are all galvanized, by the way. Just do the same thing. One nail this way, one nail that way. They will never come apart if you do that. I’ll have to do my ladder. Move my ladder to do this side here. Just make sure you’re offset a little bit. That’s it for the corner detail there. At the joint down here, we will nail it off on both sides of the joint. over here. I’m going to finish nailing these the other side. Do it
exactly the same way I showed you here. And when you’re ready to paint your fascia board, before you do, you’ll notice that rough cedar has a few things sticking around, a few frilly bits here and there. Just or even slivers. Let’s go around, clean all that up, and then uh paint it. Cuz before we do our set material, we want to prepaint all our fascia board so that when we put our pre-finished sophet material in, we have no painting to do. We’ll have a really nice, clean line when you look down here. So, we’re going to finish this up. We’re going to get it painted. Once that’s done, we’re going to show you how we do our set material. Okay,
we’ve got all our fascia and trim painted. We put back our supports, our jigs for holding the sophet material that was also used for doing our fasia boards. I have a piece here that we cut on the table saw. We took the beveled edge off here so that when we butt that up to the fascia board, it’ll be tight. I’ve also pre-cut the other end square. And I’m going to slide this into the jig. right down to the other end. Going to go down here and make sure that it’s touching the fascia board here nice and tight. Then I can come back to this end. And then all we have to do, making sure it’s pushed tight,
bring it up here. And right here on the inside of our fascia board, we will mark it off. I will get that cut. Come back and show you a couple tips to install it. Okay, I’ve cut this piece to length. I’m going to put it in in a minute. What I wanted to point out is we got two pieces going in here before you nail this one in place. Put your other piece in as well and measure it and mark it off before you install this piece. Otherwise, you’ll have a tougher time sliding it into place. We have just enough room to put it in place and drop it on this one. So, make sure you cut that one and make sure it fits before you put this
one in. To put this one in, all we have to do push it up. I’ve already checked the other end. It’s nice and tight. We’re going to use one and 3/4 inch nails along the edge here. Hold it tight to your fascia board punch. We’ll nail set that later. And go about halfway down. Push it up. And you can see got a little bit of a space there. The board’s got a bit of a curve in it. You can also see that without the paneling in place, it’s much easier for me to get in here. to hold the soft material tight to the fascia board. All we got to do is use a clamp,
hold it in place, and then we can just nail it. We don’t even actually have to hold it. I’ll set those after they go a little bit farther down. Can do that all the way along if we have to. Going to pop the end in a little bit. As you can see, we have a nice snug fit. You Want to nail it about one every once every 16 in approximately Now, I’ll finish nailing that off in a minute. What I want you to take a look at now is how we do the tongue. It’s how you hide your nails on tongue and groove paneling like this. Okay. For this part here where you’re nailing this edge of the uh tongue groove panel, you’ll nail just at
the bottom here with a 1 and a/4 inch galvanized nail on an angle in when the next piece goes on. That’ll be hidden. We’ll finish that off with a nail punch. So, we’ll do this the same way for all our pieces all the way up our set. We’ll just set those now. And I’m going to finish nailing this piece off and we’ll move on to our second piece and then we’ll move up our set. Twice today I hit my head here and these are the culprit. There’s a sharp point here. Normally I don’t usually do that. I I’m focused on showing you the little tricks here and installation and wasn’t concentrating.
So I hit my head on here just to be safe. Put a couple pieces of tape, ribbon, whatever works. And also I would recommend maybe rounding that off. You won’t have the same problem. This is one of the handiest parts of not having our smart panel, SmartSide panels on before we do our set material. I can very easily from inside nail my tongue on our board and set the nail without any problem whatsoever. When we do our next piece, I’ll be able to nail it here just as easily. If we had our panel in place, that would be very difficult. So, this makes it very easy. And I will finish this off and we’ll do the next piece. Okay, we have
our second piece in place. Now, we’ve sized our overhang to give us enough room to slide the piece up past the tongue of the first piece, get it in place, and then slide it back. Now, in order to be able to press that onto the next piece, get it tight, a wonder bar like this works great. You can get in there and you can pull it back. And then we’re going to put a nail into the truss every 2 ft. And then we will put a couple nails in the tongues on either end. And then I’m going to show you how to do the small pieces on the gable set. Okay, we’ve got our pieces cut for our cable set.
And we’re just going to pop them in place. You’ll notice we have a bit of space here. It’s about a quarter inch. That’s ideal for getting Wonder Bar in here. And pressing the material tight to the fascia board. You don’t have to worry about the space. We’re going to have trim on here after. It’s 3/4 of an inch. It’ll cover it. So, we have a nice tight fit here. Pop it up. Do the next one. Just counter sync that. You want to make sure when you’re nailing these, that your nail, you can picture that, is going like that. So when we put the next piece on, the nail is not interfering with
this part here seating properly on there. So we’ll do the next piece. Same procedure. Pop it over. When you do pop those over, make sure you’re not pushing too hard that it increases the space on the previous piece. And we’re going to continue all the way up like that. And when we have both sides done, show you how to make a quick, easy trim for the joint at the peak, cuz it’d be almost impossible to get a perfect joint up there. Okay, we’re pretty much finished with our set material. When you get to the peak here, I want to show you how to figure that out and cut the piece for here. So, it’s exactly right and you get a very nice finished line here. This
piece here, I’ve already put in place. You can also see the backing here on our ladders, which if you look at that video, you’ll see that we have one piece on either side here. That is to secure these pieces. Now, once this piece is in place, and I’ve cut it as tight as I can here, it’s got a 30° angle on the back. Once that’s in place, you cut a piece, just a piece of block like that. That’ll fit in here with a 30° angle on it. And you’ll put it in here. Put it up against the other piece. And then just mark a little line here. Do the same thing on the front. Little line there.
And then you measure from that line to the front of the V here or the base of the tongue. You measure that. We got 4 and 1/2. Check both sides just to make sure they’re parallel. If they are, then you can just rip this on the table saw. Once you have that done, you can take the piece, which we’ve already cut. You see it’s a 30° angle here. It’s 4 and 1/2 or just a hair over. 4 and 1/2 from there to there. You’re better to be a little bit wider than too narrow. Because if you’re too narrow, you’re going to have a space here. So, if you’re like a 32 of
an inch wider here, it’ll just make sure that that’s tight. And to put it in place, just slide it in. And on this groove here, just use a square block. Just tap it lightly till it’s tight here. Make sure it’s tight to the front. And then using our 1 and 3/4 inch galvanized finishing nails. Nail it in place. And we’ll set our nails. And we’re done. And as you can see, you’d have a perfectly tight joint here. Even if this was to shrink a little bit over time, it’ll still look nice and tight. Nice and equal here. Even. And that is the last of our sophet. Now that that’s done, our jigs that we
had up before can all be taken off. And you can start your roof next or as we’re going to do, we’re going to finish our SmartSide panels on the two sides of the shed and then do the roof after that’s done. And we’ll be doing the SmartSide panel completion in the next video.
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