Replace Your Roof Before Doing Anything Else
Within the home renovation workflow, roof replacement is job number one. Every single home remodeling task you undertake, from drywalling on down to the most delicate swath of paint, will be ruined if you do not protect it properly with a roof - first.When Not to Replace the Roof
Only in a few instances, you may choose not to replace your roof before taking on a big home renovation project:- A complete, overall strip-it-and-rebuild-it. Even then, at some point, the roof will come before other remodeling jobs.
- You are tearing the entire house down.
Types of Roofing Materials to Use
Your choice of roofing materials often depends on your locality, as much as on your own personal taste.- Asphalt Composition Shingles
- Wood Shake
- Metal Roofing
- Slate Roofing
- Rubber Slate
- "Faux" Slate - Recycled post-industrial synthetics.
Roof Replacement Cost and Terminology
The cost to replace a roof, as you might imagine, varies. It varies according to your roofing materials (all the way from cheap 3-tab asphalt shingles up to architectural shingles or even slate), the roofing contractor, the pitch (or steepness) of your roof, the area to be covered, and a host of other factors.Generally, you're looking at costs of $5,000 or more. It is hard to imagine a whole-house roof replacement to cost less. Roofing contractors have a great deal of flexibility to negotiate on the cost, so you please feel that you have license to do so.
There are a few words you will need to know. A "square" is a unit of measure equalling 100 square feet. A "vent" runs along the ridge of the roof to expel trapped vapor and heat, so that the roofing does not buckle and deteriorate over time.
Is Summer the Only Time to Replace a Roof?
Roofers are amazing - and this is why we pay them to do our roofs. I have seen roofers here in my very wet state - Washington State - expertly shoehorn in a roofing job between rains. No, the weather conditions do not have to be perfectly dry. However, any partially installed areas must be perfectly dry before any covering layers are installed. The trick behind "expertly shoehorning" in the roofing project is to have a large team of professional roofers who can knock out work phases in hours, instead of days. Yet another reason to perhaps think twice before doing your own roofing job.The Roofing Process
A moderately sized roofing job might take only 3 or 4 days.- Remove all existing shingles, deposit them in a roll-off, and remove.
- Begin to make minor repairs on roof if in good condition. If not, replace bad wood with plywood or 1"x6" boards, whichever is applicable to your roof.
- Install the "ice dam," which is an ice and water barrier made of plastic to prevent backed up ice in the gutters from working itself under the shingles.
- Lay down asphalt paper.
- Apply the shingles - starting at the eaves and working upward.
- Apply flashing around all areas where leaks might come into the house - against the chimney, stack vents, etc.
- Install the ridge vent.
