Honestly, if you’d seen the roof that day—sun like a brat smearing its sticky fingers over everything—you’d think it was just another bland “patch ‘n pray” situation. Slap some flashing down, shout a curse or three, and get off the ladder before knees betray ankles, yeah?
But here’s the rub: three different roofers had tangoed that section over nine winters. Three crews. Each time someone new stuck their good intentions on top of the old. Like icing on burned toast. That’s how you get overlapping flashings. Rabbit layers of metal and mastic and maybes. Feels like roofing over a question mark.
Time Makes Liars of Good Repairs
Some roofs forget, others remember. This one? Grudge-holder. You move a piece and ten more whisper beneath it, seams curling up like the corners of a suspicious letter. Nails twist sideways where gravity should’ve made them faithful. And under the third flashing, there it was: a bootleg repair that was half tar and bad luck.
I blame the 2011 guy. He probably meant well, but his flashing sat on the 2004 one like an overdressed guest crashing a wake. Couldn’t tell what was supposed to go where anymore. Like opening nested dolls and finding a potato inside.
Roof maintenance is the periodic checking of the condition of your roof and all the vulnerable areas susceptible to potential problems. It’s also the best way to keep track of your roof’s age and when it’s time for a roof replacement.
Depending on the type of roofing material, it will be annual, biannual, or quarterly maintenance. However, I always recommend maintaining your roof at least once a year.
https://www.billraganroofing.com/blog/why-roof-maintenance-important
Layer Cake of Blame and Tin
So what do you do when three repairs are all elbowing each other at once? Who’s the boss of metal when metal don’t remember whose boss it was?
Trick is, you gotta peel it. Rooster it back, hammer and chisel if it grumbles. See what’s under the under, then pull back again, like peeling an onion that never volunteered. Every layer tells on the one before. And none of them admit guilt proper.
One piece was rusted where it shouldn’t be wet. Guy must’ve used electro-galvanized steel—rookie move. Next flashing was too short, left an eyebrow of shingle flapping under rain. And somebody used silicone. Silicone! Might as well seal it with toothpaste.
Cut Clean or Go Mad
So I said to Malkin, “That’s it. We either strip the whole sin-pile and do it sane, or we keep layering like fools and make it worse for the next sap.” He grunted, as he does. Took off his glove with his teeth, which I still think is strange behavior.
We pulled the whole row. Down to the deck. Found wood rot the size of a lunch loaf. Reflashed it from the bottom up—one layer, bent proper, notched for fit, with flashing tape tucked under like a bed sheet in a military hotel.
We argued about which sealant to trust. I said butyl—he said polyurethane. We flipped a bit of coil stock for it. Butyl won. Still don’t trust it.
If It Don’t Lap, It Leaks
Key thing most folks forget: flashing gotta overlap like fish scales. If water sees a way in, it’ll slither through like secrets in a tight room. You leave a lip facing the wrong way, you might as well write “enter here” in raindrop.
Competing repairs often forget the story arc. Flashing should tell a story from bottom up—linear, structured, with a beginning and no plot holes. But when three different crews write separate chapters and none of them read the last one, you get nonsense. Flashing choose-your-own-adventure, but one where every ending leaks.
While roof flashing requires an up-front investment, forgoing it can lead to costly repairs in the future. Without flashing in place, you could end up paying thousands to repair water damage in the walls, ceilings, insulation, and other parts of your home.
https://www.angi.com/articles/what-is-roof-flashing.htm
No Glory in Good Flashing
Truth is, nobody praises flashing when it’s right. You do that job silent and neat and forgettable. Good flashing gets ignored. Bad flashing? It outlives your reputation.
We left that roof looking cleaner than any of us expected. Even Malkin stopped chewing gloves long enough to nod. Quiet sort of success. Not worth a photo, but it won’t rot out the rafters, and sometimes that’s enough.
So patch it, sure. But strip it down first, like you’re peeling off someone else’s bad ideas. Don’t layer lies on lies. Flashing don’t take kindly to being confused. Better to offend a homeowner than a roof, trust me on that.
Eventually, Everything Falls on Who Fixed It Last
It’s never the first guy who gets blamed. Or the second. It’s the last poor schmuck who tried to make sense of broken promises and mismatched metal. And roofs, they remember faces when they feel like it. Usually when it rains.
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