I must admit that in the beginning I didn't take very good photos or document things very well. One thing I would encourage is to take before and after pictures, photograph any problems you encountered and save your receipts. Once again I was a complete novice in the beginning and totally relied upon help from my good friends Krystyn and Bill Silver. At the time Krystyn worked with me at the Hill-Stead Museum and offered to help with this project. The roof had begun to leak and was in desperate need of replacement. I called on some friends and we had a weekend work party, where I fed them and provided drink in exchange for their labor for the weekend. I think it was a pretty good deal considering we needed to strip two layers of asphalt shingles and one layer of cedar shakes. The cedar shakes were original to 1910 and then two layers of asphalt shingles had been placed over them, which by the way is totally against code. You should NEVER have more than two layers of roofing on your house at one time. The project consisted of stripping all three layers, repairing the skip sheathing and adding 1/2 inch plywood. You want to use exterior grade CDX plywood. This provides a nice surface for the shingles to secure to. we installed three feet of ice and water shield along the drip edge along with new metal drip edge and rake edge. At the time architectural shingles were relatively new and double the cost of standard three tab shingles, so we went with the three tab. Architectural are pretty standard on most houses these days and give the roof more of a natural cedar shake look. If you are paying attention the ending picture of our house has the architectural shingles which we decided to install on the entire roof when we did the addition, more on that later. I highly recommend GAF brand shingles, I have used them exclusively and am very happy with the quality and performance. We also took the time to replace all the gutters on the house considering the fact that the old ones were damaged and not of the highest quality. I used Alcoa brand gutters, which in my opinion are the best. Please stay away from the big box store brand, they are of inferior quality and will not withstand the test of time. If you compare the thickness of the aluminum you will see that the Alcoa is far superior and will last a lifetime. Please visit the websites to the right of my blog to see information about GAF shingles, Alcoa gutters and Dumpsters. Don't forget the dumpster, I generally use Allied Sanitation out of Bristol. They have been the cheapest among all the possibilities. Again I wish I had taken more pictures 15 years ago but these are just a few. You will see my beautiful wife in the orange shirt. If you have any questions please feel free to ask in the comment section.
