Old Houses On The Ridge Need A Roofer Who Expects Surprises

Why Blue Island Roofs Behave Differently

The ridge is the whole story. Blue Island got its name from the high ground that stood out of the marsh, and people built on that ridge early, well before the bungalow belt filled in the rest of the south suburbs. Walk the streets off Western Avenue and you find frame cottages from the 1880s, worker housing from the railroad years, big cut-up Victorians converted to two and three units, and solid brick two-flats from the 1910s and 1920s. A Blue Island block is usually a mix of four building eras with four different sets of problems on their roofs.

What that means in practice is that a quote written from the curb here is worth nothing. On a 1900s cottage the deck is often one-by boards with gaps, not sheathing, and half those boards have been wet at some point around a valley or a chimney. On the converted Victorians we regularly find a low-slope back section tacked onto a steep front section. On the brick two-flats the parapets and the masonry caps do as much leaking as the membrane. We climb it, we photograph it, and then we price it.

That last part is where most homeowners here get burned. A crew quotes cheap, opens the roof, finds rotten board decking, and hands over a change order on day two with the house already stripped. Before the first shingle comes off you know our per-sheet decking price, our per-board price on old plank decking, and roughly how many we expect to hit. If we find fewer, the number goes down.

Layers, And Why Yours Have To Go

Blue Island has more multi-layer roofs than almost any town we work. When a roof came due in 1978 and again in 1996, plenty of contractors went over the top rather than tearing off. So we regularly pull three layers off a small cottage and find the original wood shingles underneath. Those layers cost you three ways. They hide rot until it becomes framing damage, they load the roof with weight the old rafters were never sized for, and they make every future repair a guessing game.

Illinois code caps what can stay, and honest math usually says take it all. Our shingle roof replacement here is a full tear-off to the deck, replacement of anything soft, new ice and water shield running well up from the eave, and new flashing everywhere the roof meets brick or a wall. Where a roof still has life in it, shingle roof repair is the cheaper honest answer and we say so.

The Work We Do Most In Blue Island

• Full tear-offs on ridge-area cottages and Victorians, with old plank decking replaced where it has gone soft.
• Flat roof repair and replacement on back additions, porch roofs and the flat-topped storefronts along Western Avenue.
• Multi-family roofing on the converted two and three unit buildings that make up a big share of the housing here.
• Gutter replacement and repair, because old houses on flat lots near the Cal-Sag put water right against the foundation when the gutters fail.
• Storm damage repair and insurance claim documentation after the wind and hail that come up the channel.

Water, The Channel And The Flat Lots

The Cal-Sag Channel runs along the south edge of town, and the land around it is low, flat and slow to drain. Older houses down that way sit on shallow foundations with basements that were never meant to fight much groundwater. So when a Blue Island customer calls about a wet basement, the roof is only half the conversation. We look at where every downspout ends up, whether the runs still hold pitch, and whether the gutters are sized for the roof area feeding them. Plenty of the drainage complaints on this side of town are fixed with proper gutter installation and longer downspout extensions, not with a new roof at all.

Western Avenue And The Commercial Strip

Blue Island’s business district runs old brick buildings with flat roofs, shared parapet walls and tenants underneath who cannot shut down for a week. We handle those with the same crews that do our city work: probe the membrane, find where the water is really entering (usually a parapet cap or an old drain, not the field), and give the owner a straight choice between a repair, a coating that buys five more years, or a full replacement. See commercial roofing for how we schedule around occupied buildings, and commercial roof leaks if you already have water coming in.

A Shop Two Minutes Away

Guardian Roofing Systems runs out of Alsip, close enough to Blue Island that our trucks pass through town on ordinary errands. Angelo Ristich learned this trade from his father Frank and still walks every job himself, so when there is a decision to make about a rotten rafter tail, the person making it is the owner, standing on your roof. Thirteen years in, we have roofs on most of the streets around here.

We are A+ with the BBB, carry a HomeAdvisor Elite Service award, and stay licensed and insured in Illinois. Angelo can pull satellite measurements and give you a real number while you are still on the phone, and we help homeowners get pre-approved for financing. Recent work is in the gallery, and if you want an address to drive past, ask.