Roof replacement
Roof Replacement in Milford, Michigan
Milford's housing reads like a textbook of the last 150 years — Queen Annes and Foursquares in the village, ranches and bi-levels from the 1940s and 50s in Bonnie Highlands and Peach Hill, tri-levels and quad-levels from the 60s and 70s in Oakland Orchards and Kensington Hills, and 1990s contemporaries on three-acre lots in Mystic Hills. Each one comes apart differently when the roof is replaced. We do full tear-offs across the village and township with a complete Owens Corning system and a registered warranty, and we plan every downtown job around a Main Street that closes for festivals more often than most.
Serving the Village of Milford and Milford Township in Oakland County, plus the Highland Township addresses that mail as Milford.
What is different about replacing a roof in Milford?
The house. A village Victorian on Union or Hickory Street has a steep, cut-up roof that has been re-covered several times and is almost certainly at Michigan's two-layer limit, which means full removal to a deck that may be plank. A 1960s or 70s tri-level or quad-level in Kensington Hills or Castle Heights has three or four roof planes at different heights meeting siding at every step — more wall flashing per square foot than any other house type we work on. A 1990s contemporary in Mystic Hills has big open planes, cathedral ceilings that need rafter-bay ventilation and a first-generation roof at the end of its life. The replacement itself is the same everywhere: tear-off, deck inspection, code-current ice barrier and drip edge, ventilation correction, Owens Corning Duration shingles registered under a Platinum Protection warranty. What changes is where the work is.
1840s–2020s
Age range of the housing between the village core and Kensington Ridge
18,008
Milford Township residents in 2025, up from 17,090 in 2020
7 a.m.–9 p.m.
Hours Milford Township exempts temporary construction activity, Monday–Saturday
160 mph
Owens Corning enhanced wind warranty available on every Milford replacement
Milford's houses by decade, and how each one comes apart
Milford grew in rings, and the rings are visible from the roof.
| Era | Neighborhoods | What is on the roof |
|---|---|---|
| 1840s–1950 | North Milford Village — Main, Union, Hickory, East, First, Oak, Summit, Commerce, Liberty, Canal, Atlantic | Greek Revival, Italianate, Queen Anne, Second Empire, Foursquare and Craftsman bungalow roofs — steep, cut-up, with dormers, turrets and porch tie-ins. Usually at or over the two-layer limit. Plank decks common. |
| 1940–1960 | Bonnie Highlands, Fairview Heights, Peach Hill, Needles Oak Park | Ranches, raised ranches and bi-levels with simple low-to-moderate gable roofs. Second or third covering. Plank or early plywood decks. No drip edge, minimal ventilation. |
| 1960s–1970s | Oakland Orchards, Kensington Hills, Castle Heights | Tri-levels, quad-levels and colonials on half-acre-plus lots. Multiple offset roof planes meeting siding — step flashing everywhere. Second roof, often a layover. |
| 1980s–2000s | Milford Bluffs, Heritage Hills, Milford Glen, Stonewood Estates, Mystic Hills (1994) | Two-story and contemporary multi-story homes; large lots in the township. First or long-lived second roof. OSB decks, box and gable vents, cathedral ceilings, original skylights. |
| 2020s | Kensington Ridge, Lakeview Estates, Townes at Lakeview, Uptown Village | Not due — we roof new construction to a Platinum Protection specification so it never fits the rows above. |
Neighborhood eras are drawn from local real-estate descriptions and individual property records; they describe typical homes in each area, not every house. We confirm what is actually on your roof during the inspection.
The tri-level problem
Milford has an unusual concentration of tri-level and quad-level homes from the 1960s and 70s in Oakland Orchards, Kensington Hills and Castle Heights, and they deserve their own section because they are the most flashing-intensive houses in the market.
A split-level is three or four roofs, not one: a low roof over the garage and family room, a middle roof over the living area, and a high roof over the bedrooms, each one stepping up and dying into the siding of the level above. Every one of those steps is a wall-to-roof junction that needs step flashing under the siding, a kick-out at the bottom, and counter flashing or a proper siding lap over the top. On the original roof, that flashing was often aluminum bent on site and buried under the siding, and on a layover it was frequently left in place and shingled around. Forty or fifty years later it is the most common place these houses leak.
A full tear-off is the only way to do this right. We pull the bottom course of siding at every step, install new step flashing woven with the shingles, add kick-outs, and reinstall or replace the siding over it. That is slower than field shingling and it is exactly where the hours on a Milford tri-level go.
- Bottom courses of siding pulled at every tri-level step; new step flashing woven in, kick-outs added, siding relaid
- Ice barrier to 24 inches inside the wall line, and 36 inches up the slope on any pitch of 8:12 or steeper
- Membrane on porch and addition sections under 2:12; double underlayment from 2:12 to 4:12
- Metal drip edge at every eave and rake
- Spaced or damaged plank decking sheeted over or replaced and photographed
- Turret, dormer and cross-gable valleys cut new with metal and self-adhering membrane
- Rafter-bay baffles under every cathedral ceiling in the 1990s contemporaries
- Owens Corning Duration or Duration Designer with starter at eaves and rakes and matching hip-and-ridge
The village Victorian
The North Milford Village Historic District is a National Register district, and there is no local historic commission reviewing residential roofing — the details are on our Milford roof repair page. What the Victorians and Foursquares do bring is geometry: pitches of 10:12 and 12:12, turrets, cross gables, and porch roofs at 3:12 tying into main roofs at 12:12. On a pitch of 8:12 or steeper the code requires the ice barrier to extend 36 inches up the slope as well as 24 inches inside the wall line. Low-slope porch sections between 2:12 and 4:12 need double underlayment, and anything under 2:12 gets a membrane rather than shingles. A house that has been roofed since the 1870s has almost always hit the two-layer limit, so full removal is the law, and the deck underneath is usually solid or spaced plank that gets checked board by board.
Working in the village and the township
The village and the township each permit their own roofing work — the township through a Non-Structural Permit that covers roofing, siding, windows and doors, the village through its own building department — and both want photographs of the open deck before they will pass the job. Our Milford roof repair page covers that process in detail; here is what governs the workday itself.
Milford Township exempts temporary construction activity from its vibration standards between 7:00 a.m. and 9:00 p.m. Monday through Saturday, and its residential sound limits step down at 10:00 p.m. The Village of Milford publishes no construction-hours rule that we could find, so inside the village we work a seven-to-six day out of courtesy and keep compressors off at dusk. The village does hold the contractor responsible for any litter, debris or mud leaving the job site onto public or private property, which is one of several reasons we run a magnet sweep twice.
The township requires contractors to register — a trade license, insurance and identification on file with the building department — and we keep ours current there. Milford Township Hall runs Monday through Thursday, 7:30 to 5:30, closed Fridays.
A Main Street that closes
Milford Memories takes over downtown the second weekend of August — in recent years Main Street from Huron to Summit, Liberty and Canal west of Union, and Commerce Road limited to local traffic from setup day through Sunday, with east-west movement only on Huron and Summit. The Christmas Parade runs Main Street on the Saturday after Thanksgiving from ten to noon. The Farmers' Market takes East Liberty between Main and Union on Thursday afternoons from May through October. If your house is in the village core, we schedule material delivery and tear-off around all three; a boom truck cannot stage on Main Street during Milford Memories and a container cannot be swapped through a closed block.
On the compact village lots around the mill ponds the container often will not fit the drive. Where it has to sit in the street we arrange permission with the village before delivery, not after a complaint.
The September 2026 storm in Milford
At 10:31 p.m. on September 2, 2026, the National Weather Service logged multiple trees and large branches down in Milford as the second line of the night moved through — the same line that put an estimated 70 mph gust on Howell and a measured 67 mph at the Livingston County Airport minutes later. The warning that preceded it named Milford, South Lyon, Brighton, Novi and Northville for 60 mph gusts and hail up to an inch and a quarter. WHMI reported significant flooding in downtown Milford and power outages at Proud Lake, and a flood warning stayed in effect into the early hours. The next afternoon brought more trees down on Duck Lake Road in Highland and along Carroll Lake Road in Commerce. No tornado touched down in western Oakland County.
Two things follow for a Milford roof already in its replacement window. The wind will have broken shingle seals on exposed elevations even where nothing blew off; have the roof walked and the tabs tested by hand before the fall rains, and have the findings photographed with the date. And the flooding is a reminder that on a village lot near the Huron River or Pettibone Creek, water arriving faster than the gutters can carry it finds every weak eave — which is what the ice barrier and drip edge on a new roof are there for.
Hills, water and wind
Milford sits at about 945 feet on the Huron River, between the wooded hills of Kensington Metropark and Proud Lake, and the township's larger lots on rolling ground put a lot of roofs on exposed rises. Owens Corning Duration shingles carry a 130 mph wind resistance limited warranty as standard and a 160 mph enhanced warranty when the full component set is installed with starter shingles at both the eaves and the rakes. We fasten exposed elevations to the manufacturer's high-wind pattern rather than the four-nail code minimum, and because shingles seal with a heat-activated strip that bonds in about a day in summer and can take up to twelve weeks on a north slope in winter, a Milford roof finished by mid-October seals before the November gales.
The Owens Corning system we register in Milford
On Top Roofing is an Owens Corning Platinum Preferred Contractor — the top tier of the Owens Corning contractor network in the company's own words, and the only tier that can offer its best system warranty. Every Milford replacement is registered under a Platinum Protection Roofing Limited Warranty: limited lifetime coverage on materials with a 50-year non-prorated period, limited lifetime workmanship non-prorated for the first 25 years, 130 mph wind standard and 160 mph enhanced, and 25-year algae resistance with Owens Corning hip-and-ridge. It transfers once to a buyer within 60 days of a sale.
It requires the whole system — Duration shingles with SureNail Technology, Owens Corning or approved synthetic underlayment, Owens Corning hip-and-ridge, and Owens Corning self-adhered ice-and-water barrier, starter and VentSure balanced ventilation — plus new flashings and drip edge. We install all of it as standard. On Milford's shaded lots under the heaviest tree canopy in Oakland County, the 25-year StreakGuard algae warranty earns its keep.
Matching the shingle to a Milford house
On the village Victorians and Foursquares, the Duration Designer line — Aged Copper, Storm Cloud, Black Sable, Sand Dune — reads closest to the slate and shake those houses were built to carry. The mid-century ranches and bi-levels of Bonnie Highlands and Peach Hill sit well under Estate Gray, Slatestone Gray or Onyx Black. The 1960s–70s tri-levels with their mixed brick-and-siding fronts take Driftwood, Teak and Brownwood. The 1990s contemporaries on acreage in Mystic Hills and Heritage Hills can carry Duration FLEX, the SBS polymer-modified shingle with a UL 2218 Class 4 impact rating, where the lot is exposed. We bring full-size samples to the estimate.
New Milford, and the roofs it sits beside
Milford Township grew from about 17,100 people in 2020 to an estimated 18,000 in 2025, and most of that growth is on the south end near I-96. Del Webb's Kensington Ridge, off Milford Road beside Kensington Metropark, is planned at 611 homes for buyers 55 and older around a 43-acre lake. Pulte's Lakeview Estates and the Townes at Lakeview at Milford Road and Pontiac Trail add roughly 95 single-family homes and more than 120 townhomes. Uptown Village brings a dozen townhomes to the village itself. Huron Valley Schools enrolls about 7,700 students across thirteen buildings.
We roof new construction and additions across Milford, and a roof built to a Platinum Protection specification from the first day is not in the table at the top of this page in 2055. In the meantime, every one of those new subdivisions is a short drive from a 1970s tri-level that is due right now.
Milford neighborhoods where we replace roofs
From our yard at 5896 Sterling Dr in Howell, Milford is about twenty-five minutes east on M-59 and south on Milford Road. We replace roofs across the village and the township — the historic streets north of the Huron River, the mid-century neighborhoods off Commerce and Summit, the tri-levels and colonials on the half-acre lots east of the village, the 1990s contemporaries on acreage toward Highland, and the new communities going in along Milford Road near Kensington.
- Downtown Milford
- North Milford Village
- Bonnie Highlands
- Fairview Heights
- Peach Hill
- Needles Oak Park
- Oakland Orchards
- Kensington Hills
- Castle Heights
- Milford Bluffs
- Heritage Hills
- Milford Glen
- Stonewood Estates
- Mystic Hills
- Summit View of Milford
- Crawford Farm
- Milford Pointe
- Prestwick Village
- Childs Lake Estates
- Kensington Ridge
- Lakeview Estates
- Townes at Lakeview
- Uptown Village
- Sears Lake
- Moore Lake
- Hubbell Pond
- Pettibone Lake
- Camp Dearborn
- Milford Township
- Highland Township
Frequently asked questions
Our 1970s quad-level in Kensington Hills leaks where the roofs meet the siding. Will a new roof fix it?
My house in the village is from the 1880s. Can you put another layer on?
What hours will you work, and does it differ between the village and the township?
Where does the dumpster go on a small village lot?
My house is on Main Street. Can you work during Milford Memories?
My roof was standing under the September 2026 storm. Do I need it checked?
Do I need a permit, and will someone inspect the roof mid-job?
Should I replace the skylights in my 1990s contemporary at the same time?
What warranty comes with a Milford roof replacement?
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Call (810) 588-3933