For the second year in a row a tiny harbinger of spring has made an unwelcome call at the Mojo house. As a child I watched his exploits on television and found them quite amusing. However, as a dad I find them annoying and costly of time and money.
How did my love affair with the woodpecker fall out of flavor? Our last house had asbestos siding. If a woodpecker were looking for food there all they would be met with are millions of tiny fibers that would either kill the bird or cause them to sue us.
Last year was our first spring in the new house. We heard the woodpeckers, but thought they were on a pine tree. They weren’t and by the time they had finished had pecked a good series of holes in our fascia boards that run along the chimney. Those holes were patched with wood putty and were about 15 feet off the ground. In true stay at home dad fashion, I just patched the holes and didn’t paint the wood putty.
This year the word was out on our house and woodpeckers had punched dozens of holes about 25 feet high. The woodpeckers aren’t evil (to our knowledge), they are just looking for food, but they’re doing so in a manner that costs families money or dads time. I told my wife that I would fix the holes, to which she quickly added, ‘yeah, but you have to paint them this year’. D’oh.
Time. Value. Money
The work to fix the holes is easy. 1. Spray bug killer in the hole. 2. Fill with wood putty. 3. Sand. 4. Prime. 5. Paint. There is nothing difficult or requiring of skill for this DIY job. The quandary that you will be in is how high the damage is and is it worth fixing?
For our particular job the damage was very high up and I had to borrow a neighbor’s ladder to get up there. We have a long ladder, but our neighbor has a 30 foot ladder that was needed to get to the top. The job was not difficult, but it was very dangerous. When I climbed up parallel to the roof my wife informed me that I won’t be doing this DIY job again.
The total time for the job was four to five hours, but I spread the work out over two weekends due to weather, paint drying and nerves about climbing so high. Our woodpecker damage was relatively severe. I did get one estimate for a handyman to do the job and they quoted $500. Using that estimate and guessing how long it would take me to do it I decided to do the job myself.
Another factor that we considered was the fact that our siding will have to be replaced in a year or two. Because our siding is already somewhat flawed, and on the back of the house, it didn’t matter too much that it was perfect.
The Bottom Line
You can repair woodpecker damage yourself, but carefully gauge how high the repair is. Working on a ladder is dangerous and if you don’t have a good sense of balance you can easily find yourself on the ground. Having said that, if your balance is strong and you’re patient you can save lots of money by plugging those holes yourself. Tip: Put moth balls in the holes before you plug them. While it’s not guaranteed to prevent woodpeckers next year it may at least minimize the damage.
As a stay at home dad I miss having the spare time to fix things. Even though the child is my full time job, things still break or need a fix in the house. Sometimes the repair will be something that I easily complete and other times it’s a repair that I simply should’ve paid to have it done. Regardless, I’ll write it up here in hopes that you may be able to gauge what you can do and when you need to call in for help. The series is called, DIY a Stay at Home Dad Can Do, but in some cases, you shouldn’t, because of difficulty, time involved or money. All dads aren’t equal. If you have webbed feet and can scale walls in no time flat then bypass this series and go straight to the fart jokes, which should be in the next column.
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