Re-Roofed

 And after a quick visit this morning to put on the last two downspouts, the roof and gutters are done.

We need a good rain (and, of course, the leaves to come down the fall and oak silks in the spring) to see how well it all works, but it looks good. The bigger gutters and the band of 2×8 around the top give a little heft to the look of the roof, which looks pretty good. (left before; right after)

  

There's still some caulking and touch-up paint/carpentry that needs to be done on the porch, and I need to see if pressure washing or something will clean up the old siding, but it's good to have the work done. (Next, at some point, replace the siding and replace or remove the faux shutters on the first floor, and paint/replace the door, and ...)

New Roof

Yesterday was a hive of activity with the shingles and old gutters being ripped off and new shingles going on. Lucy was not a fan of the noise, particularly when things being thrown off the roof passed by windows she was looking out. I have to admit all the banging and hammering and feeling like we couldn't leave the house for fear of falling debris did start to weigh as the day went on.

But the bulk of the work is done ... there was more damage than expected on the porch roof, so that wasn't finished by the time the crew reached the end of their day, but the roof is done (including adding the new venting for the bathroom fan) and the course of 2×8 that were put as a ring around the top of the house for the new roof and gutters to connect to is in place.

The siding modifications needed to accommodate that are done, so all that's left is to add the metal cap over that course and then the gutters. Plus finish the porch roof. (And once the porch roof is done, the handyman can come back and finish up that work.)

Today some rain and thunderstorms are expected, so they won't be back to finish things up until Friday, but we should be good and weather tight until then.

Up Top

So ... the roof. When we bought this house in 2000, we knew a new roof (and siding and gutters and windows) were going to be needed soon. The windows we put off, but during our first year we went ahead with the roof and probably made some mistakes. We went with conventional asphalt shingles, seamless gutters, and a Dutch-lap vinyl siding. All in all, it held up okay. Moss has taken root on the north side of the house and the 5-inch gutters were always too small. Plus, squirrels.

For the new roof, we're keeping most things the same, but better. We've had an issue in recent years of heavy rain overflowing the gutters and sheeting down the house. It's a hip roof, so the water flows down all four sides to the gutters. There are downspouts at each corner, but only on the north and south sides of the house; water has to turn a corner to come down to the ground (or go over the edge of the gutter). I added an additional downspout on the east side of the house, which helped some, but even when the gutters are freshly cleaned, they're too small to handle all the water from some of the storms we've been getting. Plus with all the overhanging oaks leaves, oak silks, acorns, etc., are a year-round issue.

We flirted with the idea of adding an 8-inch (or so) overhang to the house to help get the water way from the wall, but when we found out that would a few months of having formal plans drawn up and getting permits, we opted for a simpler solution that adds a new band of fascia caping around the edge of the roof and putting a new J-channel for the siding below that. This — along with 6-inch gutters, 3×4 downspouts, and a Shur Flo gutter cap system — should help channel the water flowing off the roof down to the ground.

Shingles have improved over the past two decades, too. We opted for Atlas Pinnacle Pristine architectural shingles in "heatherstone" (basically a grey with some variation in shades) with a Summit 60 synthetic underlayment under most of the roof and WeatherMaster Ice & Water 200 granular underlayment around the eaves. Supposedly the Atlas singles are designed to help reduce moss growth.

One unexpected change was the rain barrel. The RainReserve diverter we installed whenever the barrel was first installed was designed to fit a 2×3 downspout. The roofing guys planned to fit an adaptor in line to reduce the 3×4 downspout to fit the 2×3 join with the diverter, but I thought it would be better to just get a new diverter. At first, I thought we'd need to go with a different type of diverter but it turns out in 2011 the RainReserve diverters were reëngineered to work with 3×4 downspouts ... so a replacement was ordered.

Work is set to begin this week...