Preparations for Re-Roofing Asphalt Shingle Roof

Removing the old shingles.

Starting Out on the Back

A couple of years ago I did the garage shed roof job and the owner recently contacted me about replacing the remainder of his roof. The roof had some new hail damage and was really looking rough. The owner and his son would help when their schedules allowed. This turned out to be evenings which is when we planned to work instead of the hot afternoons.

As as it turned out the back roof had only one layer of very old and somewhat brittle shingles. They actually broke and cracked last summer in the hail storms. We removed them and discovered old sheathing boards with 1/4″ and greater spaces between them. I decided to patch the larger cracks and knot holes with flashing metal so if a nail hit one of these vacancies it wouldn’t punch all the way through and require a roofing cement patch. I had seen this done before on old roofs sheathed with boards.

With thunder storms looming, we were happy to have the back roof protected with underlayment. This included a course of grace ice and water shield at the eve and a synthetic replacement to felt paper covering the remainder.

Moving on to the Front

Once we moved to the front roof which faced south, we learned how brittle shingles could be. The top layer of two had only mild hail damaged as it was still flexible but the bottom layer was so brittle it broke into tiny pieces as we worked. Surprisingly, this actually made clean up on the ground easier as the pieces could be easily raked up and shoveled into the dump trailer.

The most notable thing about the preparation for the front roof was dealing with the heat. Temperatures were up around 90° with high humidity and full sunlight.

Ripping the shingles off revealed that plywood had been put down over the sheathing boards on this side so there were no gaps to deal with like the back side. Just in time, this side was covered with underlayment, so we were ready for a shower that hit us.

Final Shingle Prep

Drip edge was installed on eaves and rake edges followed by a rolled starter strip that really speeds up this step. Ready for shingles!