The Skywall roof replacement process — tear-off, decking inspection, underlayment, ventilation balance and a clean job site, backed by a 2 to 10 year workmanship warranty.
Skywall Construction · Roof Replacement in Smithville, TX · Free inspections, always
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The historic district here is among the most intact anywhere in the region, and replacing a roof on a genuine period building is a different exercise from replacing one built in the last thirty years. These are wood frame structures put together from original dimensional lumber, pitched steeply, and carrying roofs that a hundred years of different hands have worked on in turn.
The practical consequence is that nobody knows exactly what is under the covering until it comes off. A replacement here is written to accommodate that rather than to pretend otherwise, and a scope that reads as a fixed list of quantities on a hundred-year-old building has not been written for the building.
Covering over an existing roof is not available on this stock, for three reasons that all point the same way.
The deck is the unknown, and an overlay is a decision to leave it unknown for another twenty or thirty years. The existing roof is an accumulation of repairs rather than a uniform surface, so anything laid over it inherits its shape and every one of its transitions. And in a historic district the profile of the roof is part of the building’s appearance, which a second course sitting proud of the original quietly changes.
Opening one of these roofs is closer to stratigraphy than to demolition. Repairs from different decades sit on top of each other, each made with whatever was current at the time, and the interfaces between them are usually where water is getting in now. It is common for the newest repair on the roof to be the one that caused the problem being solved today: a joint sealed that was built to drain, or a patch laid so its edge faces into the flow.
For a replacement that history is useful rather than merely interesting. It marks where the roof has been chronically wet, where the deck has been cut and patched, and where framing at a chimney or a wall has been worked on before. Those are the locations that will need decisions, and they are the reason a period-building scope has to describe how discoveries get handled instead of listing a fixed amount of work.
Original decking here is frequently true-dimension board: individual boards run over the rafters with space left between them, which was the standard method before panel sheathing existed. It was sound work and it is still holding buildings up all over town. What it is not is a continuous nailing surface, and that produces a real decision once the covering is off.
One option is to keep the board deck: replace the boards that have failed, leave the sound ones, and specify the fastening to suit what is actually there. The other is to lay new sheathing over the boards to create a continuous surface, which makes fastening predictable and changes the roof’s thickness at the edges, the appearance at the rakes, and the load carried by original framing.
Neither answer is automatically right. What matters is that the decision gets made with the deck exposed and in front of both parties, that the reasoning is recorded, and that the scope written beforehand says how the decision will be reached and by whom. On a district property the appearance consequences of adding thickness at the rakes belong in that conversation rather than after it.
Every modern roofing assumption starts from a deck that is continuous, where a fastener meets wood wherever it happens to land. Put one into a gap between boards and it grips nothing at all, and there is no way to tell from the surface that it did.
Which makes fastening a specification item here in a way it is not on panel sheathing. Fastener type and length chosen for the actual substrate thickness. Penetration confirmed rather than assumed. Layout worked to where the boards actually run rather than to a standard spacing. Old-growth lumber is also harder than what comes off a truck today, which affects how fasteners seat and how much of the work ends up being done by hand.
None of that can be settled from the shingle side, which is one more argument for establishing the deck type at the outset rather than partway through a tear-off.
Period roofs here are steep, which is part of why they have lasted, and it changes how the work is done more than what gets installed. Access is from staging and anchorage rather than by walking the plane. Material moves in smaller loads. The tear-off is sectioned tightly, because an open section on a steep roof takes longer to protect when weather turns up.
That is schedule rather than specification, and it is the part most often missing from a plan and most likely to determine how the job actually runs.
In a district, the profile, the color, the ridge treatment, and the way the edges are finished are part of the specification rather than preferences to be settled later. The time to document them is before removal, while the existing roof is in front of everyone, and the documentation should be specific enough to work from rather than a general impression of how it looked.
This is Post Oak country close to the Colorado, which means canopy overhead and a roof that takes its time drying out. North slopes stay damp, and on old wood construction sustained damp goes after the deck and the framing well before it does anything to the covering.
Two things follow for a replacement. Limb clearance happens before the tear-off rather than after, because a roof cannot be installed correctly under a limb resting on it. And attic ventilation is worth reconsidering while the roof is open, since a period attic was rarely ventilated to anything like a current arrangement and a reroof is the only practical occasion to change that without disturbing finishes inside.
On a building of this age the documentation is part of the deliverable. What was found under the covering. Which boards were replaced and where. What decision was made about the deck and the reasoning behind it. Photographs of all of it before anything covered it again.
The next person to open this roof will be reading that record, and on a century-old building there will be a next person.
Every replacement starts with a free inspection and a written scope you can compare line by line. Call (512) 798-2222.
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Service Type: Roof Replacement
8101 Cameron Road.
Suite 206
Austin, TX 78754
(512) 798-2222
info@skywallconstruction.com