Short answer
Press the wood with your thumb or a screwdriver tip before you price anything. Wood that stays hard under peeling paint needs scraping, priming and paint, and the boards stay. Wood that sinks in or crumbles is rotten, and paint over rot fails in a season, so the soft sections get cut out and replaced first. Rot at a wall base or a door threshold also means water is still getting in, and that leak gets fixed before any new wood goes on.
Tell bad paint from rotten wood in five minutes
- Pick the worst-looking spot. Start where the paint peels in sheets, or where the wood meets the ground, a threshold or a roof edge.
- Push a screwdriver tip into the wood with steady thumb pressure. Sound wood stops the tip after a fraction of an inch.
- Scrape a peeling edge with a putty knife. Paint that lifts in wide sheets over hard wood is a coating failure, not rot.
- Press along the bottom 6 inches of every wall base, trim board and post. Rot starts low, where water sits.
- Check the same spots the day after rain. Damp wood, a musty smell or a dark stain means water is still arriving.
- Mark each soft spot with tape and measure the total run in feet. That number drives the quote.
If every spot stays hard, you have a paint job: scrape, prime and repaint. If the tip sinks in or the wood crumbles away, you have rot, and read on.
Repair or replace
| Situation | What to do |
|---|---|
| Paint lifts in sheets, wood underneath stays hard | Repair. Scrape, spot-prime the bare wood, then repaint. |
| Small soft patch in a board that is hard everywhere else | Repair. A carpenter cuts the soft section out, splices in new wood, then primes every cut face. |
| Soft wood across more than about a third of a board | Replace the board. Filler in a rotten board holds paint for one season. |
| Wall base, baseboard or floor tile crumbling in the corner by an exterior door | Replace that section and fix the threshold. Rot at a door means water runs in under it. |
| Wood went soft where a roof or gutter leaked | Fix the leak first, then replace the wood. New paint over a live leak fails within weeks. |
| A post, a carport ceiling or a sill plate is soft | Hire for this. That wood holds something up, and load-bearing wood is a carpenter's job, not a filler job. |
What it costs
Runhome contractor estimates for this job, including the trip and assessment.
| Option | Range |
|---|---|
| Repair rotten exterior wood at a carport and porch, then prep and repaint the wood and brick | $617 to $1,290 |
| Replace a rotted interior wall base and floor tile, plus the door threshold and weatherstrip | $545 to $1,355 |
Can I do it myself?
Yes for the paint, if every spot you pressed stayed hard and you can reach it from a 6-foot ladder. Scraping, priming bare wood and rolling two coats of exterior paint is slow work, not skilled work. No for the rot. Cutting out a soft section means finding where the water came in, matching the board, sealing the joint, then priming every cut face before the new piece goes up. Hire for this when the soft wood is a post, a carport ceiling, a sill plate or any part of the frame, because that wood carries load.
What a contractor will ask you
Have these ready and you skip the back-and-forth.
- Where the damage is. A carport ceiling, a porch, exterior trim, or a wall base by a door.
- What the surface is made of. Painted wood boards, plywood, a drywall-type ceiling, or brick.
- How old the paint is, and how long it has been peeling. Ten years since the last coat and four years of peeling are two different quotes.
- Whether the wood crumbles. Press the worst spot and say what happened.
- What started it. A roof leak, a gutter, a door that lets water in, or nothing you know of.
- Whether it is still spreading, or has stayed the same for months.
- How high it is and how you reach it. A 6-foot ladder, one story up, or roof level.
- A wide photo from a few steps back, showing the whole area instead of a close-up.
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