Roofing a Historic Home in Downtown Howell: Steep Pitches, Turrets and the Details That Matter

Walk Grand River Avenue in Howell past the courthouse and you are walking past some of the best roofs in the county. Victorian homes from the 1880s and 1890s, Queen Annes with turrets, Italianates with bracketed eaves, foursquares from the 1910s with hipped roofs and dormers on all four sides. Brighton and Fowlerville have them too, and Pinckney has a few. These roofs are not the same job as a colonial in a subdivision, and they should not be bid or built like one.

The pitch changes everything

A lot of Victorian roofs in Howell are 10/12, 12/12 or steeper. On a 12/12 roof nothing sits still. Bundles have to be staged and tied. Crews work off roof jacks and planks, and the setup takes a good part of the first morning before a single shingle comes off. We plan these jobs with more crew hours and more safety equipment than a walkable roof, and we say so up front rather than rushing a crew on a roof that will not forgive it.

Turrets, cones and curved surfaces

The turret on a Queen Anne is the part everyone notices. Shingling a cone means every course gets narrower as it climbs, and every shingle is hand-cut to a taper so the exposure stays consistent all the way to the point. Done right, the courses spiral cleanly and the finial sits on a tight cap. Done wrong, it looks like a pinecone. We have a roof in our gallery where the turret and cupola were done this way, and it is some of the work our crew is proudest of.

Dormers everywhere

A foursquare with four hipped dormers has sixteen sidewall flashings, four head flashings and four small ridges. Each dormer is its own little roof that has to be tied into the main one. This is where old roofs leak and where a shortcut with caulk shows up as a ceiling stain two winters later. Every sidewall gets new step flashing woven into the courses and counterflashing where the siding meets it.

What is under the shingles

Historic homes in Howell were roofed originally with wood shingles or slate on skip sheathing, boards with gaps between them. Somewhere along the way, most were re-roofed with asphalt, and many were re-roofed over the wood shingles without ever removing them. When we tear off, we sometimes find three layers of asphalt over cedar over skip sheathing. All of it comes off, the sheathing gets evaluated, and in most cases the deck is re-sheeted with new plywood so the new shingles have a solid nailing surface.

Box gutters and built-in eaves

Some Italianate and Victorian homes have box gutters, a gutter built into the eave and lined with metal. When the liner fails, water runs into the cornice and the wall. Replacing a box gutter liner properly is metalwork, not roofing, and we coordinate it as part of the roof job rather than shingling around a failed one.

Chimneys

A 130-year-old brick chimney often has soft mortar and a crumbling crown. We flash it correctly with new step and counterflashing cut into the mortar joints, and if the masonry above the roofline is deteriorating we tell you before we start so a mason can address it while the roof is open.

Looking right from the street

A steep Victorian roof is a large part of what you see from the sidewalk. The wrong shingle looks flat and thin on a roof this prominent. On these homes we usually recommend a designer or premium architectural shingle with a deeper shadow line, in a color that suits the era of the house: slate grays, deep browns, or the black that a lot of Queen Annes wore originally. Some homeowners go with a standing seam metal accent on the porch or turret. We will show you samples against the actual house, not in a showroom.

Historic districts

Howell has a downtown historic district and some properties fall under review. If yours does, roofing material and color may need approval. We have been through the process and can help you prepare what the committee needs to see.

If you own one of these homes

Get a roofer who has done one before. Ask to see photos of their steep and turret work. Ask what they are going to do about the skip sheathing and the box gutters. And expect the inspection to take longer, because it should. We are based in Howell and we have been on these roofs. Request a free inspection and we will walk the whole thing with you.