Old Houses Deserve Roofers Who Slow Down

Roofs Built Before Anybody Thought About Ventilation

The heart of La Grange went up between the 1890s and the 1920s, when the Burlington line made it a commuter town and the streets around the Metra station filled with the housing stock people still pay a premium for. Those houses were framed by hand. Rafters sit on odd centers, valleys are cut in place instead of factory-set, and the attic under a La Grange four-square was designed to be a dead-air space, not a vented one. When a homeowner tells us their upstairs bedroom cooks in July and their gutters grow ice dams in January, we are usually looking at a roof assembly doing exactly what it was built to do a century ago.

That is fixable, and fixing it is most of the value in a replacement here. During a tear-off we open the ridge, cut in proper intake at the soffit where the original builder gave you none, and get air moving under the deck. It costs a little more than stapling shingles over the same dead attic, and it is the difference between a roof that lasts its warranty and one that curls on the south slope by year twelve. We walk the attic before we quote, because on a house this old the roof problem and the attic problem are the same problem.

The other La Grange constant is the porch. Almost every one of these houses has a low-slope porch or bay roof tucked under the main slope, sometimes with a second-floor sleeping porch above it. Shingles do not belong on a pitch that shallow. We put a real membrane there, tie the flashing into the wall properly, and stop the slow drip that shows up as peeling paint on the porch ceiling long before anybody calls it a leak.

What La Grange Homeowners Actually Call About

• Shingle roof replacement on cut-up rooflines where the valleys, dormers and turret transitions get flashed by hand, not by rule of thumb.
• Shingle roof repair after a windy night takes tabs off one exposed slope on an otherwise healthy roof.
• Flat roof repair on porch roofs, bay roofs and rear additions, plus new flat roof installation where the old rolled asphalt is done.
• Gutter replacement in profiles that suit a period house instead of fighting it, sized for the volume a big hip roof dumps in a summer storm.
• Roof insurance claim help when a storm crosses the village and you need somebody who documents damage the way an adjuster reads it.

The downtown blocks near the station bring us commercial work too. Storefronts along La Grange Road and the mixed-use buildings with apartments over retail sit under flat roofs that leak into someone’s business. See commercial roofing for how we schedule around tenants and keep a sidewalk open while we work.

Trees, Tear-Offs And Being A Decent Neighbor

La Grange has real tree cover, which is lovely nine months a year and a maintenance problem the other three. Oak and maple litter fills gutters faster than most towns, valleys hold wet debris that rots shingle mats from the top down, and overhanging limbs scuff granules off a slope every time the wind blows. On our first walk we tell you which branches are costing you roof life. We do not cut them, but we will point at them.

Tear-offs on these lots also mean working close to the neighbors. Village lots downtown are narrow, driveways are shared, and the dumpster has to go somewhere that does not block a garage for three days. We plan that before the truck shows up, tarp what needs tarping, magnet-sweep the yard and the parkway at the end of every day, and keep the site tight enough that nobody on the block has to call the village about us. Straightforward gutter repair happens the same way: in and out, no mess left behind.

Ice Dams On A Century-Old Eave

Every La Grange winter produces the same call. Water stains the plaster along an exterior wall upstairs, and the homeowner is certain the roof failed. Usually the roof is fine and the eave is the problem: warm attic air melts snow mid-slope, the melt refreezes over the cold overhang, and the dam backs water up under the shingles. On a modern house you fix that with ventilation alone. On an 1890s house with no soffit to speak of, you fix it with ice-and-water membrane running well past the wall line, air sealing at the attic floor, and honest venting wherever the framing lets us put it. We explain which of the three your house needs and why, instead of selling all three every time.

Who Shows Up

Guardian Roofing Systems is second generation. Angelo Ristich learned this trade from his father Frank, took over the company and modernized how it runs, and he still walks jobs himself. On a La Grange house you get a real conversation about what is under the shingles, a price from satellite measurements while you are still on the phone, and help lining up financing if the number lands heavier than you hoped. We are A+ with the BBB, hold a HomeAdvisor Elite Service award, and stay licensed and insured in Illinois.

We have been at this since 2013 across the south and west suburbs, and the gallery shows the work as it looked the day we finished. If you want to see an older house we reroofed, ask. There is usually one close enough to drive past.