FEATURED PROJECT
A two-layer tear-off and re-roof of a single-story ranch in Pomona. We stripped 25 squares to the deck, replaced rotted plywood, shiplap, and fascia, then installed Owens Corning TruDef Duration COOL Plus in Mojave.
About this project
The roof on this single-story ranch in Pomona had run out of road. Two layers of composition shingle sat on it: the top one curling and stripped of its granules, the bottom one still there because someone decided years earlier that going over was cheaper than tearing off.
By the time the homeowner called us in May, the field was more patch than roof.
You can see it in the before images above. The street-facing slope had faded to a blotchy gray with wear striping running down the courses. On the garage side, blocks of bright orange replacement shingles sit against the weathered field, which is the signature of a roof repaired one leak at a time for a decade. At the gable end, the rake board had delaminated and the fascia trim had split open.
We measured the roof across three planes: 44 by 31, 12 by 30, and 26 by 21. That comes out to 2,270 square feet plus two squares of ridge. Call it 25 squares, doubled by that second layer, which meant roughly 50 squares of material coming off before a single new shingle went on.
Permit was in hand on May 28. Tear-off started at 1 PM the next day.
Tear-off is where a roof tells the truth. Under those two layers we found the original 1x plank sheathing, standard for a ranch home of this vintage, along with soft spots and gaps that had to be closed before anything could be nailed down. We set six sheets of half-inch CDX plywood, ran 108 linear feet of new 1x8 shiplap, and pulled and replaced 32 feet of 2x6 fascia along the eave. The eave detail image shows that fascia going in, with the drip edge and gutter reset over it.
TonyProject ManagerThe bid allows for wood based on what you can see from the ground. You never really know until the old roof is in a dumpster. We found more than we counted on, and we'd already told this homeowner there'd be no extra charge on the wood, so that's how it went out.
The additional plywood, shiplap, and fascia were installed at no added cost to the homeowner on this project.
The roof went back together as one manufacturer's system rather than a mix of whatever was on the truck. Deck Defense synthetic underlayment across the field. WeatherLock Flex self-sealing membrane in the valleys, where water concentrates and where most re-roofs eventually give up. Starter Strip Plus around the full perimeter. Two-inch brown galvanized drip edge chosen to match the shingle instead of contrast with it. Then 25 squares of TruDef Duration COOL Plus in Mojave.
TonyProject ManagerCOOL Plus is a solar-reflective shingle, and in Pomona that matters. We're inland, we run hot, and a dark roof soaking up August sun sends that heat straight down into the attic. The homeowner wanted the tan. The tan also happens to be the smarter roof out here.
Ventilation got rebuilt in the same pass. We ran 100 linear feet of VentSure rigid roll ridge vent under the Decoridge cap, replaced every roof jack and cap on the house, set three Ohagin tapered vents, and painted all the caps dark brown so they read as part of the roof instead of dotting it with mill-finish silver. The ridge image above shows the result: continuous exhaust along the peak, and hardware you have to look for.
The finished roof reads as one surface. Drag the slider at the top of the page and the change is not just color. The old roof had three or four tones arguing with each other. The new one runs the Mojave blend clean from ridge to eave, with a high-profile cap giving the peak a defined line and new brown edge metal squaring off every rake and eave.
The crew finished on June 4 and the city inspector was on the roof that same morning while our crew cleared the last of the debris off the driveway. The contract allowed two weeks. It took five working days.
This roof is part of the residential roofing work we do across Los Angeles County. We have torn off and re-roofed ranch homes and two-story tract houses in Claremont, San Dimas, and Diamond Bar, houses built in the same decades, with the same plank decks and the same second layer hiding the problem. If your roof is patched more than it is shingled, that is the conversation worth having.
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