Skipping ahead to the answer: The correct way to replace a soffit is to call a contractor and say "Hey, come out and fix my soffits."

My way to replace a soffit starts with a guy willing to do a cash job in his spare time, and not have him show up.

So, I climbed a ladder and looked at the problem. It doesn't look that tough. You grab a crowbar, pull down the old soffit, then fasten up a new soffit.

Problem 1: fastening up a soffit requires holding up the soffit with one hand, holding the nail with the other hand and swinging the hammer with... Oops.

However, there's a solution to this. It's called a palm nailer, and it's the coolest tool ever. You hook it up to a compressed air tank, put the nail into the pipe on the nailer, and press it against where you want the nail to go. As soon as you press against the target, the nailer vibrates and the nail slides into the wood as if it was soft butter.

Problem 2: Ladders are for climbing, not using as work surfaces. They wobble. This is why contractors have scaffolds (which I don't.)

However, a set of heavy-duty shelves and some 2x6's make a pretty good scaffold, once you set the shelves on cinder-blocks to get them up high enough and add some other planks to level things.

And besides, while I've got no use for scaffolding after this is over, I can always use another set of shelves.

So, after trips to Home Depot and Lowes, I had a pressure tank, appropriate hoses and nailer, a new set of shelving and even nice weather to work in.

After some six hours of hammering a crowbar into position and removing the heads from nails, I finally got the 4 foot piece of soffit I intended to replace down. I lifted the new soffit into place and discovered that the space wasn't square. The space was 3/16 narrower at one end than the other. By the time I figured this out, I'd tacked up one end with a nail to hold it in place while I forced the other end into position, only to discover that this couldn't happen without taking the nailed soffit down and re-introducing it to Mr. Tablesaw.

I'm afraid that at that point I'd passed "do this right,", sped past "do a good job" and was halfway between "just get it finished" and "fuckit."

In the course of this I'd also discovered that the other chunk of soffit I needed to replace wasn't going to come down as easily as the one I'd just spent hours on. The second piece was nailed up, and then the trim was nailed under it, and then it was caulked/glued in place. I'd need to take down several feet of trim before I could get at the nails to start taking the soffit down.

In the end, I got one chunk of soffit up (badly) and utterly exhausted myself. Sunday was a pretty laid-back day with just putter around the house and do small projects.

After I whined about "Owner Repair", the folks who built my house found a half-day for a couple guys to come by, tear down the soffit I'd put up, get rid of the rest of the one I'd almost gotten down, and replace the two chunks of soffit.

The keyboard on one of my laptops started skipping. The obvious culprit is the cat who thinks a laptop is a warm bed. The solution is to blow out the fur.

Luckily, I just bought an high-pressure air tank. It might not get used to put up soffits, but it's a good tool for blowing out keyboards.

It's so nice when a problem that really is a nail shows up after you get a new hammer.