In a perfect world, repairs would be made in a neat, workmanlike manner, even if the site of said repairs was such that no one would ever see them. Alas, my world is not perfect, and I’m certainly far from it. I can remember one of my mother’s common sayings, “Sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do!”
This month, I needed to repair 2 badly damaged sections of a roof. (One is a mirror image of the other, so I’m only showing one.) The challenge is that the roof is quite high – too high for me to work from a ladder, and the ground is not suitable for a scaffold. Thus, my repairs were made by “hanging out” of a window. Not hanging so much to be dangerous, but enough that it was awkward and difficult, especially since I’m not ambidextrous. All of the work below was one-handed, my right, while the other damaged area was all left-handed.
Here’s a picture of the issue. I honestly don’t know where any rainwater went, but it surely has leaked here. I can also imagine all sorts of critters finding their way into spots like this:
My plan included using pieces of shingles to “bring up” the level of the space where shingles are missing, and then to cover the whole “triangle” with sheet aluminum flashing, bent to direct water away.
I don’t have a brake to bend metal, and soft aluminum is easy to bend by hand. My main issue is that what I started out with wasn’t a flat sheet, but a roll. I also didn’t have the proper shears for cutting this, so it wasn’t possible to do what I wanted without distorting the metal quite a bit.
I made a bend at the top to tuck under the shingles, and a bend at the bottom to go over the roofing. Here’s a test fit of the lower piece:
This next picture shows a test fit of the overlapping upper piece, along with the “filled in” section. I used roofing cement to make the shingle pieces watertight and to keep them in place.
Here’s the roof cement I used. (Remember, I just show what I use, and there is no intent to advertise or promote any particular brand of material.)
I could have left well enough alone and just anchored the flashing at that point, but I really didn’t want to worry about any possible leaks. I cut a section from a spare shingle and used the upper section (NOT the “3-tab” section) and slipped it under the flashing. Then I used a couple of strategically-placed stainless steel screws and a couple of hot-dipped galvanized nails to hold it all in place.
Remember what I said about not being “seen” by anyone? I used the roofing cement and went over all the screws, nails, and joints, even where shingles met my overlapping shingle section. Not the prettiest, but here function is the key, not beauty.
Despite the above note about appearance, I painted everything black to match the roof cement. At least in my mind it looks better.
Hopefully you’ll never have to do what I did, because it was a pain, but at least I’m confident that it won’t leak!
I hope all your projects go well. Thanks for reading, and happy restoring!
Ed
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