What Actually Happens When Your Roof Gets Replaced

The first thing that happens is not roofing at all: it is covering everything that is not the roof. Landscaping against the house, the siding, the windows, anything on the deck or the patio. A tear-off sends debris down the slopes at speed and it does not land politely at the bottom. This step takes a while and it is the step that separates a job you barely notice afterwards from one you are still finding nails from in the spring.

Then the old roof comes off, and this is the loud part. Tearing off is done with flat bars and it is percussive — you feel it through the ceiling. It is worth knowing in advance that it sounds far more violent than it is, and that if you work from home or have a baby napping, this is the phase to be somewhere else for. It is also fast: the removal is usually a much smaller share of the day than people imagine.

With the roof open, the decking gets inspected, and this is the one moment when nobody can predict the number in advance. Soft, delaminated or water-damaged sheathing has to be replaced, and how much there is cannot be known until the shingles are off. A quote written before a tear-off can price the roof honestly and still have to add decking; what matters is that you are shown it while the roof is open rather than told about it afterwards.

Then the roof gets built back up in order. Ice and water barrier goes down first at the eaves and in the valleys — the two places water is most likely to be driven backwards or to sit. Underlayment covers the rest of the deck. Flashing is renewed where the roof meets walls, chimneys and vents; reusing tired flashing under new shingles is a false economy that shows up as a leak in a few years. Then the shingles go on from the eaves upward, so every course overlaps the one below it in the direction water actually travels.

Ventilation gets finished at the ridge, and the ridge cap goes on last. If the attic's intake was blocked, this is the practical moment to fix it — see the ventilation post; the access will never be better than it is today.

Cleanup is not a separate courtesy at the end. The ground gets swept and the debris hauled at the end of each working day, and a magnet is run over the lawn, the driveway and the flower beds for nails. Nails are the thing that gets missed on a rushed job and the thing you find later with a tyre. Then we walk the finished roof with you, from the ground, and go through what was replaced and what was found underneath.

Two things worth doing before the day: move cars off the driveway and take fragile things off the walls in upstairs rooms, because the vibration travels. If you have questions about how a specific job would run at your house, message us on WhatsApp at (309) 336-9329 or use the form on this site.