Fix The Roof You Have, If It Can Be Fixed

Triage Before Anybody Sells You Anything

Every repair call starts the same way. We get on the roof, and we look at four things: the age and condition of the field shingles, whether the failure is one spot or a pattern, the state of the flashings, and whether water has already been into the deck. Those four answers decide everything. One damaged area on a twelve-year-old roof with tight flashing and a solid deck is a repair, full stop. The same damage on a twenty-four-year-old roof with brittle shingles and rust bleeding out of every flashing joint is the start of a conversation about a roof replacement, and we will show you photos rather than ask you to trust us.

What we will not do is quote a repair we do not believe in. If we patch a slope that is going to fail somewhere else next winter, you paid us to delay a problem, and you will remember that when it comes back. Angelo would rather lose the repair ticket and keep the customer. That is how second-generation shops survive in a market full of storm chasers.

Wind Lifted Tabs And What Actually Happened

The most common repair we run in the south suburbs is wind damage on the windward slope. Chicago straight-line winds get under a tab edge, break the sealant strip, and lift. Sometimes the shingle tears off completely and you can see it in the yard. More often it flops back down and looks fine from the ground while the seal is gone, which means the next storm gets under it easier. That is why a roof looks perfect for two years after a windstorm and then leaks all at once.

Repairing it properly means replacing the damaged shingles and hand-sealing the courses around them, because the neighbors of a lifted shingle usually broke their seal too. In cold weather we hand-tab with roof cement rather than trusting a factory strip to re-seal at thirty degrees, since asphalt sealant needs sun and warmth to bond. A crew that just slides new shingles in during February and drives away has handed you a repair that comes loose in March.

Flashing Is Where The Water Really Comes In

Ask a homeowner where a leak is and they point at the ceiling. Ask a roofer and he looks at the nearest interruption in the roof plane. Water almost never comes through the middle of a healthy shingle field. It comes in at the chimney, at a sidewall where a dormer or a second story meets the slope, around the skylight, at a valley, or through a plumbing boot whose rubber collar has split from twenty summers of ultraviolet.

• Chimney flashing: counterflashing should be cut into the mortar joint, not smeared onto the brick face. Surface-sealed chimneys are the single most common leak we get called out to fix on Chicago bungalows.
• Sidewall step flashing: one piece per shingle course, tucked behind the siding. If somebody ran a continuous strip of aluminum up the wall and caulked it, it is going to leak, and no amount of new caulk changes that.
• Pipe boots: the collar cracks long before the shingles fail. Cheap fix, and the leading cause of the mystery stain over the upstairs bathroom.
• Valleys: debris packs in, holds water, and works under the shingles from the side. Cleaning and re-lining a valley is a repair. Ignoring it turns into deck rot.
• Skylights: the frame flashing kit fails before the glass does. Curbs get rebuilt more often than skylights get replaced.

We chase the actual entry point instead of caulking the spot above the stain. Water travels along rafters and can show up ten feet from where it got in, so the ceiling stain tells you almost nothing. That diagnosis is the part Frank drilled into Angelo before he was old enough to carry a bundle.

Matching Shingles On A Roof That Has Some Age

This is the honest limitation of every repair. Shingles fade. A roof that went on in 2011 in weathered wood does not match a bundle of weathered wood bought today, and any roofer who promises an invisible patch on a fifteen-year-old roof is selling. What we can do is get close and put the repair where it reads least. Sometimes that means pulling matching shingles from a less visible slope, a garage roof or the back of the house, and using the fresh bundles there instead.

We tell you before we start what the patch is likely to look like from the street. Most people are fine with a slightly different shade on the north slope if the alternative is a replacement they do not need yet. But you should hear it from us first, not notice it after the invoice. Homeowners in Chicago Ridge and Cicero get that conversation every time.

Repairs That Buy Years And Repairs That Buy Months

There is an honest middle ground people rarely hear about. If your roof has four or five years left and you are not ready to spend, a targeted repair plus resealing the vulnerable details is a legitimate plan, as long as everybody says out loud that it is a stopgap. We do that work. What we ask is that you go in knowing which kind of repair you bought: the kind that resets a section for a decade, or the kind that gets you to a spring when the money is there.

Storm damage is a separate track. If wind or hail did it, the repair may belong on a claim rather than on your credit card, and we handle storm damage repair and insurance claim documentation. If it is an active leak in the middle of a January night, call anyway. We have patched roofs in blizzard conditions on Saturday mornings.

Recent repair work is in the gallery, and you can send photos of what you are seeing through the contact page. We repair roofs weekly in Harvey, Alsip and everywhere in between.