Your experiences will obviously vary depending on type of roof, size of house etc. but we’re looking at re-roofing our house in the next few months. It’s a generic 2-story brick colonial - the one-story section contains a fair-sized family room+garage, and the 2-story section has 4 bedrooms all on the upper floor to give you an idea of size.
I heard one figure of 14-15K from one roofer, another of about 6K from another employee of the same roofer on a repair visit about a year ago. Both were WAGs, not done with formal estimates / measurements, but it’s surprising to hear THAT big a difference. The later of those, which was today for 6K: he said a longer-life shingle would add about a grand.
Anyway - if anyone has replaced a roof in the last few years, I’d be grateful for data points for how much it set you back.
Obviously, I like the 6K figure a lot better than 14K, but I don’t want to cheap out and do it wrong.
Cost me somewhere in the $6k-7k range about five years ago for a three bedroom ranch. That was for a tear off and replacement, plus repair of the squirrel damage that was the catalyst of getting the aging roof replaced in the first place.
Do the tear off. Slapping shingles over a compromised roof is throwing good money after bad.
If you have the time, find the Norandex Reynolds supplier in your area and ask the guys at the counter if they will refer someone. Sometimes they will depends on the branch. If not, they will prob give you the names of their biggest customer - get a quote from those guys.
There are structural issues to consider with an overlay type of job. I have that situation now. The current roof was put over the previous one. There wasn’t an issue since the beams are 2x12’s that are 12" on center. However a couple of years ago we had a lot of snow and I did notice the cracks in the ceiling along the central load-bearing wall got a bit worse (there are a couple of places where there isn’t any actual wall, just the supporting beams - like hallways). Of course we’re talking about a couple of feet of snow and ice accumulating, so I guess that’s not too bad.
Next time around I’ll have to pull everything off so I’m also interested.
@Sattua: I like the idea of a metal roof. Does that sound strange when you have a heavy rain or is it insulated well enough that there’s no real difference from a normal shingle roof?
The condition of your roof under the shingles can make a big difference. My mother had the roof replaced on her house (approx. 1200 sq. ft. of roofing) a couple of years ago. It cost about $3000 more than the original $9000 estimate because of necessary structural repairs. I probably could have found people to do the job for less, but didn’t want to inflict my mother on them (trust me, whoever did the job earned their money).
There are metal roof suppliers that can provide all pieces drilled and pre-cut to size, including all trim and gutters. This can save money by cutting down the installation time. I’ll probably go with this option in the next 1-2 years. But we’ll put extra money into insulation. Our log cabin has no roof insulation, only 2" thick cedar planking, so this should save money on heating and cooling.
I’ve heard from more than one person that adding a new layer of shingles on top of old ones doesn’t look good. Any buckling or rippling in the old roof gets magnified in the second layer. I guess it depends on the condition of the old shingles.
dzero - I’ve been in metal roofed homes during heavy rain, it seemed to be a little louder. It seemed a lot louder in light rain, but maybe it was just different, making it more noticeable.
I paid about $15K for a new metal roof (steel…copper was twice as much) about 10 years ago. The old metal roof was a patchwork of repairs when I bought that place and it needed to be done.
Nice roof. Made selling the place a lot easier.
And no, I never noticed anything about rain being noisier. And I lived under that roof, before and after the replacement, for many years.
The cost for ours was just to put the metal on top of what was already there. In our case the asphalt shingles weren’t compromised yet, but were going to get that way very soon. Our house is uber-mod with a low pitch that doesn’t shed rain well. Really, it never should have had shingles at all.
There is ZERO extra noise when it rains, possibly because of the shingles under the metal (?) or possibly because there’s an attic to buffer the roof from the living area. I’m a little disappointed by that, in fact.
I just put a new roof on my old house that is for sale. 1700 SF home with a 2 car garage and we paid $7k for tear off and new roof 30 year shingle roof. It looks great and I am glad I did it.
My guess is your roof will be between $7-10k. I would get at least 3 bids as they will vary but you can usually get at least two of them down to the lowest bidder. We had 3 bids, the high was $9k and the low was $6.5k but we added some things (like additional valley protection) that brought the final price to $7k
What’s the cost variance these days for shingles vs. metal? (I too need a new roof soon on a 1700 SF bungalow.) I have had two quotes for shingles; both were around 8K +/-.
We paid $6700 last year to do a tear-off and reshingle. There were also some dry rot problems with eve jacks and some other eve material that needed replacement. We live in a Craftsman bungalow with a roof area of probably 700-900 sf.
Caffeine.addict is right. The metal roofs cost a little more initially (maybe 20% more? I don’t have numbers–the one estimate we took for shingles was obscene, meant to be bargained down) but last for decades.
Sheet metal roof or metal shingle roof? The metal shingle roofing is expensive, but as noted will look like new 30 years from now. Sheet metal roofing is not something I’d recommend unless you live in a place with a huge snow load every winter.
The smooth kind with pleated joints that run up and down. Yes, it does shed the snow like an avalanche. It’s the kind that’s put on every single commercial and public building around here.
Yes, we often have up to a foot of snow on the ground around here.
Um… now that I think about it… while it’s a hugely popular choice here in the Midwest (though less so for residences) and also on the UP where my parents live, it was also hugely popular on Saint Thomas, which makes me conclude that contrary to ChefGuy’s assertion (unless he can explain what he meant), it’s a great material for a variety of climates.
Okay, I’m done in this thread. OP wanted to know what the ballpark cost was, I said what it was for us.
I just went through this after the Snowpocalypse here in DC - the main roof beam in our 1925 row house actually broke in half (!!). We had to do a complete tear-off all the way down to the interior plaster, replacing both roof beams and all the joists. This is obviously far more than a normal roof requires, even if you’re doing a tear-off and replacement - all told, our new solar-reflective membrane roof cost us (well, insurance) right around $35,000. That cost did not include the skylight and roof access hatch that we paid for out of pocket. We had received quotes from the same roofer earlier that year (so 2009) for about $12,000 to do a tear-off and replace - this is a 1200 square foot flat roof. Asphalt would have been a little less.
All I can say is…thank you, Snowpocalypse, and if you can, you should get homeowners insurance through USAA.