Putting the shingles on the roof

Normally when you build a house, you apply the shingles right after you put on the tar paper,

however, once we had the tar paper on, we had to go build the porch in order to get the house

ready for siding. So the shingles were put off until after all of the other things were done

that needed to be completed in order to keep everything and everyone moving.

Here we are shingling the roof

With the addition of the bay windows, the roof line had two additional smaller roofs that had

to be shingled along with the main part of the roof. This is where you have to plan out how you

are going to apply the shingles. You have to match the height of the row you are currently working on

with the rows on both sides of the smaller roofs so that when the shingle rows meet to form one big

row, they are all on the same row. You also have to match the slot position so that you don't end

up with two slots right next to each other when all of the rows meet. After you have all of this laid

out, you are ready to begin.

You need to start with a starter shingle across the first row. Usually this is a shingle that you

flip around 180 degrees so that the slots are facing up toward the top of the roof rather than

down toward the edge of the roof. The starter shingle is there so that the first row of shingles

will have something to stick to and a place for the water to run when it runs between the slots of

the first shingle. To make things go easier, we made up a spacer stick that you can put on the shingle

row that you just finished that you can rest the next row of shingles against so that all of your

rows are evenly spaced.

Here we are fitting the shingles around one of the skylights

Another task you will have to account for is vent pipes or skylights. You will have to have flashing

around these items to insure that you don't have any leaks. Finally, you have to decide how you

are going to vent the attic. Some people use vents in the walls in the attic. Some people have

individual vents in the roof. Another option is to use something called vent-a-ridge. This is a

one piece vent that goes along the top of your roof and allows the attic to "breathe".

Here are the shingles being "boomed" onto the roof

Now that you have all of the prep work figured out, you need to buy the shingles. Depending on

how high the roof that you are shingling is, you may want to consider having the shingles "boomed"

up on the roof. Booming the shingles means that a company to comes out to the job site and puts

the shingles on the roof for you so that you do not have to carry each bundle of shingles up to