When is the last time a professional inspected your roof? Want us to come have a look?

It’s taken us 25 years but we did it! We have worked hard enough and smart enough to get big enough to get the best mills in Canada to make us our own top quality cedar shakes! This is a huge blessing for all involved. A real win-win situation.  The standards are nothing short of perfection. What this means to you is that we are skipping all of the middle men! Those middle men markups traditionally add up to $30 to $70 per square for a homeowner. With our new Canadian sourcing, we can bring absolute top-quality cedar shake shingles to Portland and supply them to our customers for just a little more than all the others offer lower grade crappy shakes. It’s a beautiful thing!

The difference to you as a homeowner is 80% less maintenance. Fewer repairs, less treatment and a lot better looking roof profile. You should take the time to look at the roofs that we have replaced within just a few minutes of your home. When you request a free inspection, we leave behind a list of the nearby addresses so you can drive your neighborhood and check out our work. If we are in your sights to be your maintenance company, we serve a lot of your neighbors too, all within a few minutes of you.

All of us here at Roof Life of Oregon spend 8-10 hours per day looking at roofs. This is our life, and it’s what we do every day. Unfortunately, there are plenty of Portland roofing contractors who have done some awful work over the years. We’re fixing problems every day that would scare you to death if you knew what was going on up on your roof. Seeing what we see makes us work even more diligently developing ways to explain the differences so that as a layperson you can make an educated decision. Roof Life of Oregon is your best and safest choice in roofing and roof maintenance in Portland

In the roof maintenance world of Portland, there are several companies that use a pretreated green shake to repair a roof that was roofed with raw shakes. These repairs never blend in, leaving you with a permanently marked roof. Others use a #2-grade shake so they can save a couple hundred dollars per roof. Some others find it too time consuming to hand nail the repairs in a blind nail application, instead they top nail and/or use a nail gun and nail the daylights out of your roof. And how about the contractor who only uses small crappy shakes that never fill the hole they were pulled from, leaving key ways 2-3 times the regulation size required for your roof to work right.

You know that none of these contractors is worried about their poor workmanship, because they’re not going to answer the phone when you call with a problem. If you had a bucket with as many holes as their warranties have, it would never fill up. You only find out you been shystered when there is a leak or you go to sell and the roof flunks the inspection. This happens all the time in Portland.

In the roof replacement world of Portland, there are some really extreme cases. I’ve been documenting them and I’ll be sure to show them to you in future blog posts.

I’m Patrick Morin, founder of Roof Life of Oregon. I’ve made it my mission to educate Portland homeowners about the roofs over their heads. If you need me, you know where to find me. Just look up on your neighbor’s roof or call us at (503) 925-0125.

But, she’s young and she wants to grow and learn so much more than our company can possibly teach her. So, she’s off to new challenges and we wish her the best success. It was a pleasure to have you with us Holli!

-Patrick D. Morin,

Holli’s last day.

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When is the last time a professional inspected your roof? Want us to come have a look?

The trick is to put together quality gutter components that complement each other and then work to together to outperform the competition.

We gently remove your old, worn out gutters to well-placed ground tarps. This eliminates any possible mess to your yard. We break down your old gutters and recycle them. We then start fresh with the best metal or aluminum we can find. We have it pre-painted or primed at the factory. We form it to your desired style on site, using cutting edge metal fabrication machines. Next, we precisely measure each cut to best fit your home. We back caulk every joint with an elastic gutter compound that’s watertight. This creates a perfect seamless gutter system.

We then install the gutters using a hidden clip system and a stainless steel type S 2-inch screw. It has a very aggressive bite and will hold the gutter firmly in place. Metal will expand and contract, pulling and pushing most gutter attachments past their ability to hold. Our design will allow the gutter to move and never stress our attachment. The net result is a lifetime perfect fit and performance for you to enjoy.

In addition to the performance of our hidden clip system, our gutters also offers to you an unmatched profile. A smooth long seamless profile to enhance the exterior of your home.

How about a downspout that resists clogging up? It is so frustrating to have downspouts that do not work. Your Roof Life gutter system features downspouts with fewer metal screws protruding into the spout. This results in a cleaner flow for the rain water and any debris washing down. It also makes them easier to clean.

Rain Gutters have come a long way since yours were installed. Give us a call at 503-925-0125 or fill out our form for a free gutter inspection and replacement estimate today!

When it comes to gutter debris issues we hear it all, as a roof maintenance company, we are called on to do a lot of your dirty work. Cleaning your gutters is just one of them. We don’t mind, until you start complaining about how much you see us! That’s when I knew I had to go out and find a solution.

Good looking, long term gutter debris protection is the solution. I believe Rain Flow USA is currently the best gutter guard on the market. I like it because it’s affordable, out of sight from the ground and of course it works. The manufacturer warrantees it for 20 years and produces different shapes and sizes that will fit any type of gutter you may have, including round, copper, aluminum and seamless.

Call us today to have your gutters inspected. We clean out and replace gutters all over Portland. Call us at 503-925-0125.

The lowest bidder put the roof on your home when it was built. That’s how they do it in production homes. The guy who can do it the fastest and the cheapest wins.

Unfortunately for home owners who need to replace their roof, a lot of replacement roofing contractors follow the same line of thought. Sell the re-roof for a cheap price and then cut every corner in the book. Fast is the standard rule for these guys, and most times, important details are overlooked for the sake of the almighty dollar. Quality is a choice. We don’t even bid on new construction, because we won’t compromise the amount of quality required as a trade-off in speed, skill and durability.

“Quality is never an accident. It is always the result of intelligent effort.“

- John Ruskin

This one concept is very important for you to realize, as it is a mistake made over and over by the vast majority of homeowners. It ends up costing them more than they could ever imagine.

Some of these overlooked items seem like such small things, especially on a roof. These small details from the ground are huge deals when you’re on the roof. When they’re neglected and/or overlooked in the original installation it will cause a homeowner thousands in repairs. Especially if the oversight is in the transition areas of the roof. Some other common examples; neglecting to use neoprene screws on exterior flashings, kick out flashings left out, allowing water down or into the sidewalls of your home. Most of these oversights and few others go unnoticed until a storm with wind and rain is hitting your home at just the right angle.

It has always paid dividends to pay more “up front” for the correct installation of a roof; a roof that is installed following a set procedure by a company whose policy is to check on that procedure daily. Accountability is available at Roof Life of Oregon where we deliver Portland’s best and safest choice in roofing. Call us today at 503-925-0125 or Let us Know how we can help you!

photo credit: kris!

Here is another low bid re-roof project where the homeowner got the short end of the stick. Of course, they thought they were getting a smoking hot deal. This 1st picture is of a roof on the weather side dormer on the front of a home valued at over $900,000. It was recently completed in the Alameda District of Portland, Oregon. The weather side of a home in Portland means it faces southwest. All of our serious wet weather comes from that direction. This is not a wall to cut corners on!

We had reroofed a neighbor to this home and also got a chance to make a presentation on this project. We ended up not getting the chance to serve them. They did get a short educational presentation made by the one and only Tony St. Pierre. They chose to use another well-known roofing company in Portland, known for being one of the cheapest Roofing Contractors in town. The contractor decided that it would be too much effort to flash this front dormer sidewall.

Instead, they decided to shove the high-end shingles (Camelot by GAF/ELK…top quality) under the siding trim board without any flashings! (GAF/ELK, the manufacturer, would “pass a brick” if they saw this type and kind of installation.)

This low cost contractor claimed it wasn’t possible to flash it. That’s simply not true. This wall should be taken apart by removing the trim boards and if needed replace the Masonite stucco panels. The roofer’s excuse was that the original builder didn’t do it. (I’ve talked plenty about the shortcomings of builders.) The long- term problem with this improper install is that when the caulking fails (and it WILL fail, usually within 6 years), it will feed water right into the house. At first, it will be a small leak and go undetected as it causes all types of dry rot issues. Then the leak will get bigger. The homeowner will finally respond when a different contractor tells him it’s the roof and it’s going to cost thousands to fix. Combine that with your time, stress and inconvenience and it just wasn’t worth taking the low bid. This happens all the time in Portland.

This other picture shows what happens to a side-wall that touches the roof. The siding soaks up the water and starts to rot. More than likely the roofing contractor did not replace the step flashing and thought that if he runs the roofing tight to the wall and then caulks it, it should be fine. That is just crazy talk! Never accept substandard work, period.

Here’s a picture of yet another roof installed by the same “reputable” well known roofing contractor. His guys decided to shoot nails through the edge metal. It not only looks stupid, but calls into question the skill and technical knowledge of the company. Sure, the company looks good and smells great, and the salesman can talk a blue streak but for cryin’ out loud look at their finished work! That’s why they’re cheap folks.

We really care about your roof and your budget. That’s why at Roof Life of Oregon we do it right the first time and charge accordingly. We back it up with a lifetime transferable workmanship warranty. It’s just the right way to do it!

12 years later, in the middle of an ordinary Portland rainstorm, the roofing around that nail finally gave way and all the water flowing through that key way found its way into the home. The water followed the sheet rock ceiling to the downhill crack. After a brief soak, it busted through the paint and exploded onto the kitchen table right into a pile of the children’s schoolbooks and an open laptop computer.

It would have been an entertaining study diversion, except the owners were not at home. For hours on end the dripping water filled up the laptop, then covered the wooden table with good old Oregon rain. The rain then spilled onto the hardwood floor and all of it sat there for the rest of the day. You can imagine the panic that ensued when the homeowners arrived to their watery kitchen. (Timely reminder: Have you backed up your hard drive lately?)

Here’s the real tragedy: The insurance company denied the claim. It was determined that the problem could have been prevented with simple but careful roof maintenance. The insurance agent recommended Roof Life of Oregon. That’s when I showed up and found the 12-year-old nail that caused $6,500.00 in damage to the inside of the home. We also fixed a few other problems on the roof to the tune of $1,280. The guy that caused all of this damage had a 12-year head start, and the statute of limitations on stupidity is pretty short

Your only defense against a tragedy like this is to have your roof checked and maintained every 5 years. Call us. We’re very good at roof maintenance. If you need to replace your roof, your best defense is to have Roof Life of Oregon install your roof. Why? We have Portland, Oregon’s only Lifetime Roofing Workmanship Warranty.

We asked the homeowner if he knew who roofed his home. He confirmed that it was a local roofing contractor, still in business in Portland. This should have been a super roof! It was installed with ¾ inch, 50-year CCA, treated cedar shakes. Other than routine maintenance, this roof should have outlived the homeowner! We advised the homeowner to contact the roofing contractor to get his roof replaced under a workmanship warranty.

The reason for this roof’s failure was that the installation crew over-drove the staples. As the cedar shakes expanded and contracted, holes were created. Once created, rainwater could reach the felt paper on a consistent basis. The constant exposure to moisture wore out the felt paper in a very short time, allowing water to leak into this home in about 16 areas. This scenario is not fixable and the roof must be re-placed.

At Roof Life of Oregon, we always use individual regulators on each nailing gun. These regulators are adjusted to deliver the perfect set to each fastener or staple. Most roofing crews are paid according to the speed at which they apply shingles. They either go fast or starve. Roof Life of Oregon’s roofing experts are all paid by the hour. In addition, they receive safety bonuses. This assures you that correct procedures are supported and sustained with fair compensation. We follow our strict installation procedures and policies to the letter every day. It keeps us from having to come back and replace roofs.

The National Roofing Contractors Association reports that it takes 6 years for the first signs of poor workmanship to become a problem to a home owner. Now, think about this: 70% of all roofing contractors are out of business in 5 years! 90% are out of business in seven years. Most reputable roofing contractors have a two to five year workmanship warranty. Very few offer a longer protection. Roof Life of Oregon is the only roofing contractor in Portland that offers a lifetime transferable workmanship warranty on all of our roofs. Yes, that’s right. Lifetime. Transferable. Workmanship Warranty.

Our West Linn homeowner was very lucky; his contractor was still in business and determined it was his staff’s oversight that caused the problem. The fasteners were over driven into the shakes damaging the structure of the wood. As the shakes expanded and contracted with the seasons, the small amount of cedar under the fastener gave way in hundreds of places. This improper installation allowed a continual exposure to the elements, which rotted out the paper under every one of the staples in just 6 years. No wonder his roof was leaking everywhere. Even though the roofing contractor used good cedar shakes, his installation crew did not use regulators on the nail guns. This was a $35,000 mistake!

Just because you have a composition roof, doesn’t mean this can’t happen to you. If the installation crew nails the shingles on your roof outside of the nail strip, similar failure is bound to happen. Whether the shingle is nailed too high or too low, it will not last and will fail prematurely. If the fastener is high, the wind shear will tear the shingle off. If the fastener is low, wind driven rain will  come through the hole and your roof will leak like a sieve.

If you want your roof put on right, backed up with the best workmanship warranty in the Portland market, using only time proven techniques and top of the line products, consider Roof Life of Oregon, at your service since 1983.