The longer answer
Why animals pick your soffit: squirrels and birds don't chew through sound wood if they can help it — they find the section a gutter leak already softened and open it up. A warm attic on the other side does the rest. That's why the same corners get re-invaded year after year: the entry gets stuffed with foam or screen, but the soft wood around it stays soft.
The right order of operations:
- Wildlife removal first. A licensed removal service confirms the attic is empty — babies in a nest change the timeline. Sealing an occupied soffit traps the animal in your attic, and it will chew a new way out.
- Then the rebuild. We cut out the chewed and rotted sections, rebuild the entry point with sound material, replace damaged panels to match the profile, and prime and paint.
- Then the cause. If a gutter overflow or fascia rot softened the wood, we fix that in the same visit — otherwise you're scheduling the next tenant.
What it costs: quoted per job after a free look — a single re-built entry point is a small job; a run of chewed panels plus the rot behind them is bigger, and we'll show you exactly which you have. Details on our soffit repair & replacement page.