The Quiet Village With The Straightforward Roofs

Second Roofs, Third Roofs, And What Is Under Them

A postwar cape in La Grange Park is on its third roof by now, sometimes its fourth. The original was probably three-tab. Somebody laid a second layer over it in the seventies because that was normal then, a third crew tore both off in the nineties, and whatever went down that time is what you are living under. Each of those jobs left something behind: nail patterns that missed the rafters, a vent stack boot nobody replaced, flashing at the dormer cheek that got caulked instead of woven. None of it leaks the day it goes on. All of it leaks eventually.

The good news is these roofs are honest to work on. A cape or a ranch off Mannheim Road has a roofline you can read from the driveway, so what we quote is what we find. There is no turret, no sleeping porch, no century-old framing on random centers. When we tell a La Grange Park homeowner the job is two days and the number is the number, that holds unless the deck under the old shingles turns out to be soft, and we photograph the deck before we cover it so you see exactly what we saw.

Where these houses do get interesting is the additions. Half the village pushed out the back at some point: a family room, a converted breezeway, a garage tied into the house with a low-slope roof somebody shingled anyway. That shallow pitch is where the water sits, and it is the single most common leak we chase in this village. Shingles need pitch to shed. Below about 2:12 they hold water instead, and the joint where that flat section meets the main slope is where it finds a way in.

What We Get Called For In La Grange Park

• Shingle roof replacement on capes, ranches and split levels, full tear-off to the deck, never a layer over a layer.
• Shingle roof repair when one slope took wind damage and the rest of the roof has good years left in it.
• Flat roof repair on rear additions and attached garages, plus flat roof replacement where rolled asphalt has gone brittle.
• Gutter installation and gutter repair, because a ranch has a lot of eave line and undersized gutters overflow at the corners every real storm.
• Wind damage repair and insurance claim help after a front comes through and takes tabs off the exposed western slopes.

There is commercial work here too, mostly modest: the buildings along the La Grange Road edge, a few small offices and institutional roofs. Those are flat systems, and we handle them the same way we handle a big one. See commercial roofing for how inspections and repairs get scheduled around whoever is using the building.

Ventilation On A House With A Finished Attic

Capes have a specific problem and this village is full of capes. The upstairs bedroom is carved into the roof itself, which means the insulation sits right against the underside of the deck with almost nothing between them. There is no big open attic to vent. What air channel exists is a couple of inches at most, and if a previous insulator packed batts up tight against the sheathing, there is no channel at all.

The result is a hot deck in August and ice dams in January, and no amount of ridge vent fixes it by itself if air cannot get in at the bottom. When we replace a cape roof we look at the intake first: are there soffit vents, are they open, or did somebody paint them shut in 1988. Then we deal with the channel, sometimes with baffles, sometimes by telling you the honest answer, which is that a properly detailed roof with ice-and-water membrane up the slope is the practical fix on a house that will never vent well. We would rather explain the limitation than sell you a ridge vent that does nothing.

Gutters On A Long Low House

A brick ranch throws more water off less height than any other house shape in the western suburbs, and most of these homes still have the gutter profile they were built with. Five-inch runs and small downspouts were fine when the trees were saplings. Now they clog by October, freeze solid, sag off pitch, and dump the whole roof’s runoff in one spot next to the foundation. Then the basement gets damp and everybody blames the roof. We check the whole path, roof to splash block, on every inspection, and more often than not the fix is larger downspouts and correct pitch rather than anything up top.

The Outfit You Are Hiring

Guardian Roofing Systems is a second-generation company. Angelo Ristich learned the trade from his father Frank, took the business over and modernized how it operates, and he supervises jobs himself rather than sending a salesman and disappearing. You can get a price over the phone off satellite measurements, and if the number is a stretch we will help you get financing pre-approval sorted before the crew is ever scheduled.

We are A+ rated with the BBB, hold a HomeAdvisor Elite Service award, and are licensed and insured in Illinois. Since 2013 we have worked steadily across the west and south suburbs, and the gallery has photos taken the day each job wrapped. Ask for a nearby address and we will give you one to drive past.