New Roof Installation in St. Louis

Each part goes on the way the manufacturer specifies, because that is the condition for a valid material warranty. A skipped step in nailing or underlayment can void the coverage, and it is the homeowner who discovers it years down the road.

The deck comes first and it governs everything above it. Once the old roof is off we walk the bare sheathing looking for delamination, soft spots between rafters, old cut-ins and anything spongy underfoot. Rotten sheets come out. On older homes with plank decking we check the gaps, because planks shrink over decades and past a certain width the fasteners above have nothing to bite. Re-nailing the deck to the framing is cheap while it is open and impossible once it is covered.

Ice-and-water membrane goes at the eaves, in the valleys and around penetrations. It is a self-adhering sheet that seals around a nail shank, and the reason it belongs at the eave in this climate is ice damming: when meltwater refreezes at the cold overhang, water backs up under the shingles, and that membrane is the only thing between it and your ceiling.

Synthetic underlayment covers the rest of the field. It replaces felt, tears far less in wind while the roof is open, and does not wrinkle when it gets rained on during a job that runs into weather.

Then the metal. Drip edge at eaves and rakes, which keeps water from curling back onto the fascia, and the valley detail, woven, closed-cut or open metal depending on the roof. Starter course at eave and rake with the adhesive strip in the correct orientation, which sounds trivial and is exactly why edge shingles blow off.

Field shingle goes on to the manufacturer's nailing pattern and offset. Penetrations get proper flashing rather than sealant, meaning new vent boots instead of reused collars, and step flashing replaced rather than bent back and re-bedded.

Ventilation gets designed as a system at the end, exhaust at the ridge balanced against intake at the soffit. Then the cleanup nobody photographs: tarped beds, debris kept off the lawn, and a magnet run across the driveway and yard. New construction and additions follow the same sequence. The only difference is that we are specifying every layer instead of inheriting somebody else's.