We Found Two Roofs on One House

The Top Roof Was Hiding the Real One

We tore into a shingle replacement in Colton last week and found two roofs. The top layer was asphalt shingles. Underneath them, the original wood shake, from an old layover job somebody did decades ago instead of a proper tear-off. Shingles laid right over the shake, problem buried, check cashed.

The shake under there was so dry from years of Inland Empire heat that it disintegrated underfoot. My crew would take a step and the layer would crumble under their boots. That is not a roof anymore. That is kindling with a shingle jacket on.

If you think there is shake under your shingles, the whole job, resheet included, is written up on the wood shake roof replacement page.

Why Layovers Are a Bad Deal

A layover is when a roofer installs new roofing directly over the old instead of tearing off. It is cheaper on day one, and that is the entire list of advantages. Everything wrong with the old roof stays there, hidden, getting worse where nobody can see it. The new layer ages faster on top of the old one. And when the day of the real tear-off finally comes, you pay to remove two roofs instead of one.

In this house's case, the layover also buried a fire concern. Bone-dry wood shake is exactly what you do not want sitting under your roof in a wildfire region.

The Overlay Always Comes Back to Bite You

I have watched a lot of homeowners take the overlay (same thing as a layover) to save a couple thousand dollars on the tear-off. I get it. Two grand is two grand. But here is what that decision actually buys you.

Every layer you add is a layer somebody has to tear off later. And the price of that tear-off, and of the whole replacement, does not sit still. Our material suppliers raise prices roughly 2 to 4 percent every quarter. Not every year. Every quarter. So the overlay does not save you money. It moves the bill down the road and lets it grow on the way there.

And it is not just roofing. Everything has been going up. Even Apple, a company with more cash than most countries, said this year it could not keep absorbing what memory chips cost and raised prices across most of its lineup. If Apple cannot eat its material costs, your roofer cannot either. The difference is that Apple's increase is a hundred bucks on a laptop. Ours is thousands on a roof you are going to have to replace anyway.

Real numbers. A homeowner recently handed me a bid we wrote in 2022: 22 squares, two layers to tear off, $585 a square. That was $12,870 for the whole roof. The same roof today prices at $787 a square, which is $17,314. Same house, same two layers, about $4,400 more, because it waited four years. And there is no kicking that can again: California code allows two layers on a roof, period. Once you have overlaid, a third layer is not an option. The next roof is a full tear-off of both layers, at whatever the price is that year.

And here is what "kicking the can" looks like when nobody stops. Highland, an inspection this week: at least three layers at the rake edge, debris packed between them, and a homeowner surprised that it leaks. Every layer up there was somebody's decision to save a couple thousand dollars, and the bill for all of them landed on the one person holding the house now.

Then the same homeowner is shocked that the roof costs more four years later. It was always going to. The roof is going to get replaced. That part is not optional; the only question is what it costs when it happens. Don't overlay. We do not do them, and here is why: do it right once, at today's price, because today's price is the cheapest one you will ever see.

You Cannot Shingle Over Skip Sheathing

Here is the part most homeowners have never had explained. Wood shake does not sit on a solid deck. It sits on skip sheathing: spaced boards with gaps between them, because shake needs airflow from below. Asphalt shingles need the opposite, a solid continuous deck under every inch.

So this job could not be a simple swap. It was a full resheet: tear everything off down to the boards, install a new OSB deck over the skip sheathing, cut in ridge ventilation, and then build the new cool-rated shingle system on top of a deck that can actually hold it.

The Part of the Roof You Will Never See

Nobody drives by and admires a deck. The OSB disappears under the underlayment the same day it goes down. But that unseen work is what decides whether the roof lasts. A shingle system is only as good as what it is nailed to. This is the same reason we open up and inspect decking on every tear-off: the surprises live underneath, and finding them during the job costs a lot less than finding them during a storm.

If your home was built mid-century and has ever had a "new roof" that went suspiciously fast, it is worth finding out what is actually up there. Two roofs is one too many.