This past weekend, he finally had time, so my Friday and Saturday were spent on the roof of the garage!
PLEASE NOTE: this post is not meant as a how-to. This is one of those projects that is best left to the pros - I was assisting Larry, but by no means would I have done this myself. This was a pretty straight-forward repair with no flashing needed or anything like that. You may use this information to do small repairs, but do not attempt to reshingle your roof without the supervision of a professional. I've also recently had an acquaintance fall off a roof and break most of his body, so even if you get brave and want to attempt this, PLEASE be careful. Alright, enough disclaimers.
The part of the roof we worked on is part of the original house, so there were two layers of shingles to remove. Judging by the amount of granules in the gutters, the top layer was really starting to give. The great thing about the house is that we're able to do the roof in sections instead of having to get it all done at once. We also took Andy's advice and went with a dark gray shingle instead of the brown, which is going to look fantastic when the whole thing is done.
To start, they brought in a Skytrak to get the shingles up onto the roof, cause carrying them up a ladder is way old school.
We were planning on starting on Saturday, but it called for rain all day, so we decided to do the tear off on Friday evening instead. I'm glad we did - that split the job up into two days instead of one long day.
Larry determined our starting point based on where the garage met the house, then we grabbed our tear off tools, and started pulling up the first layer.
You can see the layer underneath was in bad shape, hence them adding a layer on top. We worked our way down with narrow rows of shingles so they'd be easy to toss into the dump trailer, but then we got what Larry referred to as a "super roll" going - which although effective and quick at the time, pulling it apart to toss over the side was not as fun.
We moved onto the second layer, and the tar paper underneath, and started discovering the weak points.
There were several spots where the plywood had separated from the nails, and created some gaps, but most didn't appear to have any water damage. Then we found the spots.
This was about halfway up, and maybe 4 square feet, just enough to be problematic. The other was near the edge of the roof, and not quite as bad, and not really worthy of a photo. The whole tear off took maybe 2-3 hours, which was pretty amazing. We called it a night and started in again bright and early Saturday morning.
Saturday - 9am. Not super early, but I'm not standing on a roof at 7am - I need to be awake and have some balance before I get up there. \
For both weak spots, we broke out the circular saw, set the depth to 1/2", and cut it out. The one above we cut to be 4'x4', just to be sure we got all the rotting, and the other was about 2'x8', so we could use one 4'x8' sheet and patch both holes using a pneumatic nail gun.
We then took the nail gun around and inspected all the other seams and made sure any that were popped out were nailed back in place.
Once the base was all secure, we rolled out a couple rows of ice and water shield at the edge of the roof, and DiamondDeck underlayment on the rest using staple hammers, which are awesome, and although I have no reason to own one, I still want one.
Larry added the drip edge around the perimeter, and then it was time to start laying shingles. The first row is no fun, since I hate being on the edge, even when it's only 6 feet to the ground (because of the berm on the side of the garage), but once we got the initial row out of the way, just like flooring, it was a breeze.
To start, I had to cut a couple of starter sets using the 6-12-18-12-6 rule, where I would cut a shingle at 6", and put the two pieces in separate piles, then the next at 12", and so on. That way the seam is staggered as you move down the roof, instead of having the seam in the same place every other row.
We had two nail guns, and the shingles have this blue line on them to show you exactly where you should place the nail, and again, just like flooring, the outer nails should be close to the seam, and then two more in the middle, so each full shingle gets 4 nails. Before I knew it, we were done.
The worst parts of this project were the tear off and the clean up afterward, as a result of the tear off. Applying the roof was actually quite fun, and although I was sore, it was way worth it. I love that the new shingles mute the siding, making it more gray and less tan. The shingles are also double thick and the color varies, so it hides dips in the framing more than the brown did.
Overall we're very happy with it, and can't wait to get the rest done, but it will have to wait till next year!
