Soffit and Fascia Replacement Cost in Madison, WI

How soffit and fascia get priced

Both are priced by the linear foot, installed, and measured separately.

Fascia is the vertical board at the edge of the roof that your gutters hang on. Soffit is the horizontal underside of the overhang, the panel you see when you stand under the eave and look up. They fail together because they fail from the same water.

Typical Dane County pricing:

• Aluminum wrap over sound existing fascia: $8 to $14 per foot
• Remove and replace wood fascia, then wrap in aluminum: $12 to $22 per foot
• New vented vinyl or aluminum soffit: $10 to $20 per foot, depending on overhang width (a 12 inch overhang is cheaper than a 24 inch overhang)
• Rotted rafter tail repair: $60 to $150 per tail
• Seamless aluminum gutter, removed and replaced: $8 to $14 per foot, more for 6 inch oversize and extra downspouts
• Minimum job / mobilization: most reputable crews have one, often $600 to $1,500 for small repairs

Quick sanity check on footage: measure the length of your house, double it, then add the two gable ends if they carry fascia.

A representative example

The following is a representative job, not a specific customer's invoice, with numbers rounded. It reflects the kind of 1960s Madison ranch we work on constantly.

Front elevation only: 38 feet of fascia soaked from a gutter that had been overflowing at one end for years, four soft rafter tails, 38 feet of 16 inch soffit, new 5 inch seamless gutter with one added downspout. Fascia and soffit just under $1,500. Rafter tails roughly $400. Gutter run about $450. Two days, one crew.

Same house with all four elevations and 6 inch oversize gutter lands nearer $5,000.

What actually drives the cost up

Height and access

A one-story ranch off Cottage Grove Road is ladder work. A two-story with a walkout basement on a Verona hillside is staging, scaffolding or a lift. In our experience, height and difficult access commonly add somewhere in the range of a quarter to half again on labor. Reaching over a sunroom, three-season porch, bay window, deck roof, AC condenser or mature landscaping bed all cost more to do safely.

Rotted rafter tails and roof sheathing

This is the biggest surprise on soffit and fascia jobs. Fascia is nailed to the ends of your rafters. When it has been soaking for years, the rafter tails behind it are often soft, and so is the first 6 to 12 inches of roof decking.

You cannot nail new fascia to punky wood and expect gutters to stay up. Sistering new material onto rafter tails is real carpentry, and it is the line item honest contractors flag on site instead of "discovering" mid-job.

Gutter removal and re-hang

Gutters have to come off to replace fascia. Old spike-and-ferrule aluminum from the 1970s and 80s rarely survives removal in reusable shape. Budget for new seamless gutter, and ask early whether your leaf guards can be reused.

Paint on older homes

On pre-1978 homes (there are plenty on the near west side and around the isthmus), disturbing old painted wood means lead-safe work practices. That adds containment and cleanup time.

Hidden rot: what a fair allowance looks like

Nobody can see behind a fascia board from a ladder. So the question is not whether there will be unknowns, it is how they get priced and approved.

What we put in writing before we start:

• A unit price per rafter tail and per sheet of decking, locked, so the price does not change based on when we find it.
• A rot allowance you can plan around. On a ranch, setting aside $400 to $900 beyond the base scope covers most cases. On a two-story with visible sag or staining across multiple elevations, $1,000 to $2,000 is realistic. If we do not use it, you do not pay it.
• Written change orders only. If we open an eave and find more than the allowance covers, work stops on that section, we photograph it, and you get a text or email with the photo, the unit price, the new total and a yes/no. Nothing verbal, nothing assumed, nothing billed after the fact.

If a bidder cannot tell you their per-tail price, they have not decided how they will charge you for it yet.

Materials, and how they hold up to Wisconsin freeze-thaw

Madison trim takes dozens of freeze-thaw cycles a winter, plus ice dams, plus 90 degree July humidity. That combination is brutal on wood.

Aluminum wrap (coil stock) over wood fascia. The standard, for good reason. New pine or spruce does the structural work, a bent aluminum skin does the weather work, no repainting. Typical .019 painted aluminum coil lines from major suppliers publish finish warranties in the 25 to 40 year range; read the actual warranty document for the coil going on your house, since coverage is on the paint finish, not on the wood behind it. Sloppy wrap with open joints funnels water behind the metal, and then the rot is invisible.

Vinyl soffit. The workhorse. Inexpensive, vented, does not rot, does not need paint. Gets brittle and chalky after 20-plus Wisconsin winters, and it moves a lot with temperature, so it must hang loose in the channel. Nailed tight, it buckles by the second August.

Aluminum soffit. Costs a bit more than vinyl and holds shape better, but dents easier from ladders and hail. Good on wide overhangs and sun-baked south elevations.

Engineered wood (LP SmartSide and similar). Excellent fascia when you want a painted look. Handles humidity swings far better than raw pine. It has to stay painted, especially the cut ends.

Real wood (cedar, pine, redwood). Right for some older homes, and sometimes required for historic review. Expect to repaint every 6 to 10 years on south and west exposures. You see a lot of it still in older Stoughton and Middleton neighborhoods.

PVC / cellular trim. The premium option. Will not rot, ever. Pricier, and it moves with temperature, so it needs proper fastening and expansion gaps. Worth it on chronically wet elevations.

If your home is also due for siding work, that is the moment to upgrade trim material, because the crew, the staging and the trim details overlap.

Will it match?

Almost always. Aluminum coil and vinyl soffit come in wide color lines, and we match to your existing siding, window wrap and gutter instead of guessing. Profile matters too: vented triple-4 soffit next to solid double-6 looks wrong from the driveway, so we mirror what is there. Newer subdivisions in Sun Prairie and Waunakee often have narrow overhangs with center-vent panels, which changes both the venting math and the look.

If you are in a Madison local historic district (Mansion Hill, Third Lake Ridge, University Heights, First Settlement, Marquette Bungalows), swapping original wood trim for aluminum or vinyl can require Landmarks Commission review before material is ordered. We check that up front, not after.

> Not sure how far the rot goes? We will come out, get on a ladder, probe the wood and tell you straight whether it is 12 feet of fascia or the whole eave. Free, no pressure, real numbers before you decide anything.

Fascia rot is almost never just a fascia problem

Wood does not rot without a water source. Find it before you install new trim, or you buy this job again in five years.

• Undersized, clogged or wrong-pitch gutters. Water sheets over the back of the gutter and down the fascia. Look for staining and peeling paint right under the gutter line.
• No drip edge, or shingles not overhanging far enough. Water clings to the shingle edge and wicks backward. Common after a low-bid reroof.
• Ice dams. The Madison classic. Warm attic air melts snow, water refreezes at the cold eave, then sits on fascia and soffit for weeks.
• Blocked or missing soffit intake. Insulation stuffed over the top plate with no baffles lets moist attic air condense right at the eave and rot the soffit and sheathing from inside.
• Missing kickout flashing where a roof meets a wall.

How to verify the new soffit vent is actually enough

Ask for the numbers, not the adjective "vented." Here is the math to hold a contractor to.

The rule you will see in code and manufacturer literature is 1 square foot of net free area (the actual open air space, not the panel size) per 300 square feet of attic floor, and it only counts as 1-in-300 when intake and exhaust are roughly balanced. Unbalanced, you are at 1-in-150.

Work an example. A 1,500 square foot attic needs about 5 square feet of net free area total, which is 720 square inches. Half of that, 360 square inches, should be intake at the soffit, and intake should never be less than exhaust at the ridge. A fully vented vinyl soffit panel might list roughly 9 square inches of net free area per lineal foot, so you need about 40 feet of it. A center-vent panel with a narrow perforated strip can be a third of that, which is how homes end up with soffit that looks vented and breathes almost nothing.

Two more things to insist on:

• Baffles at every rafter bay you are opening, holding at least a 1 inch clear air channel from the soffit up past the insulation. Without them the insulation slides down and re-blocks the vent you just paid for.
• Exhaust that matches. More intake than a ridge vent can exhaust is fine. More exhaust than intake pulls air backward through the ridge and can pull conditioned air out of the house.

We hand you those numbers in the scope: attic square footage, required net free area, panel net free area per foot, feet of vented panel, baffle count. That is why we handle trim inside our residential roofing work instead of treating it as an afterthought.

One misconception worth killing: new soffit does not solve squirrels, bats or wasps already in your attic. Closing the eave with animals inside traps them, and a trapped squirrel chews back out through your new panel. Wildlife gets excluded first (one-way doors, and for bats, Wisconsin's legal timing windows, since bats are protected), then we seal.

Wrap versus full replacement

Wrap it when the wood is dry and solid the whole length. Push a screwdriver into the board every few feet. If it stops hard, wrap is fine.

Replace it when the screwdriver sinks, gutter spikes have pulled through, the fascia waves or sags, or paint blisters from behind. Wrapping soft wood is the number one shortcut we get called out to undo. It looks perfect from the driveway while the board turns to compost.

Replace the rafter tails when the last few inches of rafter are soft. No exceptions. A full gutter of ice weighs hundreds of pounds.

What the job week actually looks like at your house

One to three days for a typical ranch. One day if we are already on site hanging gutters. Three to five days for a two-story with rafter tail carpentry and lead-safe prep.

How we protect your property, because this is eave work and everything lands in the worst places:

• Landscaping and beds under the work area get covered with tarps or plywood before a ladder goes up. Ladder feet get pads or standoffs so they do not sink into mulch or crush shrubs.
• Decks, patios, driveways and walks get tarped in the drop zone. The coil brake is a long tool and needs a flat staging area, usually the driveway, on blocks and padding, not directly on your concrete or asphalt.
• The AC condenser gets covered and kept clear. We do not stage material on top of it and we do not drop cut-offs into the fins.
• Dumpster or trailer placement gets agreed on before day one. On most trim-only jobs a trailer at the curb or the end of the driveway is enough. If we need to sit on the drive, we put down protection.
• Pets and kids. Tell us. We will let you know which elevation we are on each morning so the dog is not out under an open eave, and gates get closed and re-latched.
• Nails and cut-offs. Aluminum trimmings are sharp and easy to miss in grass. We magnet-sweep and hand-pick the perimeter at the end of every day, not just at the end of the job.

Your house is never left open to weather overnight. Open eaves get closed or covered before the crew leaves. You do not need to be home, but be reachable, because that is how change orders get approved fast.

How to read competing bids

Cheap bids are usually cheap because something is missing from the scope. Red flags:

• No line item for rafter tails or decking, and no rot allowance with a stated per-tail price.
• No drip edge on the estimate. If gutters and fascia come off and drip edge does not go back on, water goes right behind the new board.
• "Wrap only" quoted on wood that is already soft. Ask what they probed with. If they never touched the board, walk.
• No ventilation numbers. "Vented soffit" with no net free area figure is a guess.
• Verbal-only scope. You want linear footage, material, color, vent type and net free area, gutter size, downspout count and guard handling in writing.
• No proof of insurance. Ask for general liability and workers comp certificates, and verify Wisconsin credentials through the Department of Safety and Professional Services.

Our warranty and payment terms

Workmanship: 5 years, in writing, on soffit, fascia and gutter installation. That covers our labor, flashing details, fastening and sealing. Material finish warranties (that 25 to 40 year coil coverage) come from the manufacturer and never cover bad installation, which is exactly why the workmanship term is the one that protects you. If you are also doing a roof, ask us about the longer manufacturer-backed system coverage available on a full roof replacement.

Payment: a deposit at material order, balance at completion. No large up-front cash asks.

Financing: we work with third-party home-improvement lenders, and the programs available at any given time usually include a no-interest promotional period (commonly around 12 months) plus longer fixed-rate installment options. Rates, terms and approval depend on the lender's current programs and your credit, so we will not quote you a payment on the phone. What we will do is put the actual lender terms sheet in front of you before you sign anything, so a $4,000 to $9,000 project is not a surprise.

Save money by bundling it with a roof or gutter project

Mobilization is a real cost. Trucks, ladders, staging, dumpster, crew day. Three separate visits means paying it three times.

1. With a roof replacement. The eave is exposed and gutters are off, so drip edge, ice-and-water shield along the eaves and intake vent go in the correct order. Best value, hands down.
2. With a gutter replacement. Gutters are coming down anyway, so adding fascia is mostly material.
3. With siding or a storm claim. If wind or hail bent fascia, cracked soffit panels or tore gutters loose, that trim belongs in the claim scope. We meet your adjuster on site and walk it with them, because soffit and fascia line items get missed constantly on first estimates. That is the core of our storm damage restoration work across Dane County.

You can see the eave and trim detail we hold ourselves to in our recent projects.

Get a real number, this season

Soffit and fascia rot does not stay put. It moves inward to the rafter tails and roof deck, and it hands squirrels, bats and wasps an open door. Every winter a soft eave sits there is another season of ice sitting on it.

Here is what happens when you call Buckshot Exteriors: we come out at a time that works for you, get on a ladder, probe the wood, check gutter pitch and attic intake, take photos, and hand you a written scope with linear footage, material, color, ventilation numbers, per-tail rot pricing and a real total. If wrap is all you need, we will tell you that. If it is 40 feet of fascia and six rafter tails, you will see the photos.

The inspection is free. There is no fee to find out, and nobody is going to lean on you at your kitchen table. Buckshot Exteriors has been locally owned and operated since 1979, serving Madison and Dane County. We would rather earn the job in five years than pressure you into it today.

Call Buckshot Exteriors for a free soffit and fascia inspection in Madison and across Dane County, or request your free estimate here. We also run 24-hour emergency response if wind has already pulled trim or gutters loose.