That’s a close up of our old roof, and yes there’s trees growing in the gutter! I used to get up on a ladder and clear them out, but it became more difficult every year and… I just stopped.

Furthermore the roof itself was wearing out, and moss had started to grow on it. Since it was there when we bought the house, it was at least 25 years old, and very likely much older than that.

It was time to replace both the roof and gutters. Finding companies to do both was much easier than expected, and we had both jobs done during the past week. The roof came first.

The first step was to put this giant tarp shield up around the house, to protect everything when the pieces of the old roof came down.

After the tarp was up it was time to tear off the new roof. I was home when this occurred and the noise inside was unreal – like fifty tornadoes destroying the house simultaneously. It took them about two hours to completely remove the old roof and underlay, which included a surprisingly thorough process of cleaning the plywood underneath to prepare for the new roof.

It was dark inside due to the tarps, but as you can see sun was shining into the attic with the roof off!

The top shows the bare plywood – only two pieces of which needed replacing. They then put three layers of waterproofing underlay down (middle photo) before laying down the new shingles.

I had been wondering how they got the heavy boxes of shingles up onto the roof, and the answer was with this ‘laddervator’. A motor-powered elevator attached to a ladder carried them up in moments, and then the workers placed them on the roof near where they’d be installed. Every time they dropped the shingles down the sound inside was like an elephant jumping onto the roof. The cats were terrified!

After the shingles were done all that was left was waterproofing the chimney and installing the piece at the top of the roof (called a ‘ridge cap’). They then did another exhaustive cleanup of the property – including using an electric magnet to comb the grass for nails – before it was all done.

All told it took seven guys about seven hours. It looks great, and is warrantied for fifty years. It will outlive me 🙂

If you look closely at the above photo you’ll notice there aren’t any gutters, since the old ones were removed before the roof went on. It was four days before the process was completed with new gutters being installed.

This process began with careful measurements, before a machine called a ‘guttermaker’ extruded our new gutters in a single forty-six-foot piece!

This was entertaining to watch. They told me the theoretical longest gutter the machine could make was over 700 feet (!) and the longest they’d made was about 150 feet, which required six men to carry.

The gutters are aluminum, which begun as a flat roll of metal. After endcaps were put on the new – permanent – guards were attached:

We don’t have a lot of leaf material falling onto our roof, but these guards should prevent any that does from going into the gutters. This means we (hopefully!) won’t have trees growing on our roof any more.

The new gutters were then attached in a single piece, new downspouts were fashioned and attached, and the job was done:

All told it took three people three hours. Like the roof these are wandered for decades, and I hope they’ll outlive us 🙂

All told the new roof and gutters was much easier and less expensive than what we expected. If I’d known that in advance, we may have got this done years ago.