Project file 1147 · 2024
A Tudor in Clayton, re-slated to last a century.
14,000 sq ft of variegated Vermont slate. Hand-laid over ten weeks. Original ridge cresting cleaned and re-bedded.
Clayton, Missouri
The house was built in 1928 for a banker who, the story goes, sent his architect to England for six weeks to study chimneys. The original slate came over by ship and survived ninety-six Missouri winters before the south slope finally surrendered.
We were the third roofer on the site visit list. The first two pitched synthetic. The third, us, pitched a re-quarry to Vermont. The owner walked us back to the carriage house, pointed at the original 1928 ledger her grandfather kept, and asked which option her grandfather would have wanted.
The job ran ten weeks. The crew slept at a motel in Brentwood three nights a week so the project never lost momentum. The original ridge cresting was lifted, cleaned with a wire brush, re-soldered where it needed it, and re-bedded as the last act of the install. The new slate now wears the same color as the day it left the quarry. The cresting still wears its hundred-year patina. Both will outlast us.
How the work moved
Six weeks in five acts.
Document the original.
Three days on a lift with cameras and chalk. Every original ridge piece, finial, and copper detail was photographed, numbered, and tagged before a single course came off the deck.
Tear off in sequence.
We worked one slope at a time, kept the house covered through every overnight, and stored salvageable slate on plywood in the side yard. Nothing went in the dumpster that the historic register might have wanted back.
Re-deck where the old wood asked for it.
About 9% of the original 1928 decking had given up. We cut clean, sistered the rafters where rot had crept in, and laid 30-lb felt under a fresh ice-and-water at every valley and eave.
Course by course, by hand.
Vermont slate, sorted on the deck by hue, holed with a slating punch, fastened with 20-oz copper nails. Eight thousand individual slates went on this roof. Each one was touched by the foreman before it landed.
Solder the seams. Re-bed the crown.
Copper valley pans were bench-soldered in the shop, carried up, and set in fresh asphalt mastic. The original ridge cresting went back on last, set in mortar that matched the original under a UV-cured archival color.
Walk it with the owner.
The foreman and the owner spent ninety minutes on the lift on the last Friday. Every penetration inspected. Every drip-edge measured. The walk ended in the kitchen with the warranty packet and a small bag of leftover slate for the next century's match-in.
From the foreman
“We did not install this roof. We sent it back to the year it was built.”
Donovan crew foreman, project 1147
Bring us in
Your roof has its own story to tell.
What homeowners are saying
“Justin did a great job of communicating and was on the job site a lot.”
Gerald K. · Google
“Nick Mirth did an excellent job throughout the process our insurance claim!”
Tim C. · Google
“Great experience, very knowledgeable and customer friendly. I would highly Recommend.”
Kathy O. · Google