Roof Repair in St. Louis, MO

We take photos as the job progresses so you can see the layers that get covered up. The hidden parts, the ones covered by the final course of shingles, are what determine the life of the roof.

Chimneys are the single most common source we find on city homes, and frequently they are chimneys nobody uses anymore. An abandoned flue with an open or cracked crown takes water straight down the chase and into a ceiling, and no amount of work on the surrounding shingles will touch it. The fix is masonry and a proper cap, and we will say so.

Original slate still exists on plenty of city roofs, sometimes under later asphalt. Slate that has been walked on carelessly or patched with the wrong fastener sheds individual pieces for years afterward. It is a genuinely different trade from asphalt work and worth knowing what you have before somebody puts a boot through it.

Dormers are a repair category of their own. Each one introduces two sidewalls, two valleys and a roof-to-wall transition into a small area, and the step flashing on those is frequently the original, rusted or simply absent behind later siding work.

Party walls on rowhouses and tight-set flats create a shared problem with no shared owner. Water entering at a common wall or a shared parapet affects two buildings, and the repair needs both sides addressed to actually work, which is a conversation better had early than midway through.

Plank decking is standard on this vintage rather than plywood. The planks shrink over a century, and once the gaps open past a certain point, fasteners driven between boards hold nothing. That is not visible until the old roof comes off, and it is the most common reason a city repair turns into a larger conversation.