What Separates a Good Exterior Job From a Cheap One

Here is the uncomfortable thing about exterior work: a bad job and a good job look identical from the street on the day the crew leaves. The difference shows up in year three, or the first time a nor'easter drives rain sideways, and by then the cheap crew is unreachable.

So rather than asking who does good work, which everyone claims, it is more useful to know where the corners actually get cut. There are about six places, and they are all invisible by the end.

1. The tear-off that never happened

Shingling over an existing roof is faster and cheaper than removing it. It also hides whatever is wrong with the decking underneath, adds weight the framing was not designed for, and traps heat that shortens the life of the new shingles.

A crew that tears off looks more expensive on paper. What they are actually selling you is the chance to see the decking before it is covered up again for twenty years.

2. Flashing that got reused

Where a roof meets a chimney, a wall, a valley or a skylight, the shingles are not what keeps water out. The flashing is. Flashing is also fiddly, slow, and completely hidden once the job is done.

Reusing old flashing saves a couple of hours and a small amount of metal. It is the single most common reason a roof that is only a few years old leaks. Ask directly whether all flashing is new, and watch how quickly the answer comes.

3. Ice and water shield that stopped short

In North Jersey the eaves are where ice dams form, and an ice dam does not damage the roof surface. It pushes water backwards, uphill, underneath the shingles. The only thing standing between that water and your ceiling is the membrane at the eaves.

Running it the minimum distance up from the edge is cheaper. Running it properly, and into the valleys, costs a little more material and is the difference between a wet February and an ordinary one.

4. The fasteners nobody counts

Every shingle and every siding panel has a specified number of fasteners, and a specified placement, and on a windy exposure a higher schedule. Nobody checks this. It is faster to use fewer nails and it saves nothing meaningful in material cost, which tells you it is purely about speed.

Near the coast there is a second version of this problem: the wrong fasteners. Salt air corrodes standard fixings, and a coastal roof usually fails at what holds it on rather than what it is made of.

5. The decking nobody looked at

Once the old roof is off, the decking is visible for a few hours. That is the entire window in which soft boards, old water damage and previous repairs can be found and dealt with.

A crew working to a fixed price with no line item for decking has an incentive not to notice. An honest estimate names a per-sheet price up front, so that finding a problem is a known cost rather than an argument on day two with your roof open to the sky.

6. Who actually turns up

The person who quotes the job is not always connected to the people who do it. Work gets subcontracted, and the crew on your roof may not be covered by the insurance certificate you were shown.

In New Jersey this is checkable. A registered home improvement contractor must carry at least $500,000 in commercial general liability insurance, and must display their registration number on contracts and on their vehicles. If the van in your driveway carries no registration number, the paperwork you were handed and the people on your roof may not be the same business.

What this means when you are comparing quotes

A cheaper number is not automatically a worse job, and an expensive one is not automatically a better one. But a quote that is thousands below the others is buying that gap somewhere, and it will be from this list.

• Is the old roof coming off, all of it?
• Is every piece of flashing new?
• How far up from the eaves does the ice barrier run, and is it in the valleys?
• What is the per-sheet price if decking needs replacing?
• Who is on the crew, and are they covered by the insurance certificate?

Five questions. A contractor who has been doing this properly answers all five in under a minute, because the answers are just how they work. That is the whole test, and it is more reliable than any claim anyone makes about themselves, including us.

Sources

• NJ Division of Consumer Affairs, Home Improvement Contractor registration