Project file 0975 · 2025
The White House Retreat, slated and copper-clad to win.
Over one hundred squares of slate, hand-laid across steep multi-pitched slopes, finished in custom copper. Named Project of the Year by North Country Slate.
St. Louis, Missouri
The White House Retreat sits on a wooded bluff above the river south of the city, a retreat house with the footprint of a small estate and a roofline to match. Steep slopes, deep valleys, dormers, and turrets. The kind of roof that rewards patience and punishes a shortcut.
The brief was simple to say and hard to do: slate the whole thing, and let the copper do the talking at every valley, every wall, and every penetration. No step flashing hidden under caulk. No exposed fastener where a soldered seam belonged. The owner wanted a roof that would still be the right answer in a hundred years.
We laid over one hundred squares of slate by hand across those slopes, and we fabricated the copper to fit the building rather than the other way around. Valleys were bench-soldered in the shop, carried up, and set. Wall flashings were stepped and soldered. The result earned North Country Slate's 2025 Slated for Excellence Project of the Year award in the hundred-plus-square category. A judgment, by the people who make the slate, on the people who installed it.
On film
How the work moved
Six weeks in five acts.
Survey every slope.
A multi-pitched estate roof has no two planes alike. We measured each slope, dormer, and turret, mapped every valley and wall line, and built a copper cut list off the building itself before a single sheet was bent.
Deck it for a century.
Tear-off, re-deck where the wood asked for it, and lay ice-and-water at every eave and valley under the slate. The substrate is the part nobody sees and the part that decides whether the roof makes its hundred years.
Slate by hand, slope by slope.
Over a hundred squares of slate, sorted by hue on the deck, holed and fastened by hand, one slope finished and weather-tight before the next came open. The foreman touched every course.
Let the copper do the talking.
Valley pans soldered on the bench and set in mastic. Wall flashings stepped and soldered up the sidewalls. Custom copper at every chimney and penetration, the detailing the award judges came to see.
Walk it, then submit it.
The foreman and the owner walked every plane on the last Friday. Once the roof passed our own inspection, the photos and the spec went to North Country Slate. The award came back in 2025.
From the foreman
“We did not set out to win an award. We set out to build a roof that would still be right in a hundred years. The award was the slate makers telling us we did.”
Donovan crew foreman, project 0975
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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