01
A new roof starts with what's under the shingle, not the color of it.
Architectural shingle and cedar shake roof installation for Norman and Central Oklahoma homes. We do not install metal roofing, and we will tell you that before you ask. Call (405) 360-4772.
Chapter 01
What a new roof is actually resting on
Before we talk about shingle color, we're on the roof looking at the deck underneath it. Soft spots, delaminated plywood, old fastener holes left from a roof that has already been recovered once before. A lot of Central Oklahoma homes built in the seventies and eighties carry decking that's solid everywhere except one corner, usually over an old plumbing vent or a bathroom fan duct that has been sweating into the sheathing for years without anyone noticing from inside the house.
Put a brand new architectural shingle over decking like that and the shingle is not what fails first. The deck flexes underfoot, nail heads back out over a season or two, and a roof that should run twenty or twenty-five years starts leaking in five. We open the deck up before we set anything on top of it, because a shingle is only ever as good as what it's nailed to.
A newly installed architectural shingle roof on a Norman, Oklahoma home, with a David Fries Roofing yard sign in the front yard.
How we set an architectural shingle roof
Tear-off comes first, all the way down to the deck, not a layover on top of what's already there. We inspect the deck as it's exposed and replace any sheet that's soft, then run underlayment, starter course, field shingles, valleys, and ridge, in that order. The pattern matters more than most homeowners expect: how the courses offset from row to row, where the nailing line actually falls on the shingle, and whether a section gets hand-nailed instead of gun-nailed when the decking underneath it is brittle enough that a gun will overdrive the fastener.
Architectural Shingle Installation is most of what we do, but Cedar Shake Roof Installation is a real request in this part of Oklahoma too, and it's a different build entirely: different fastening, different exposure, different spacing between courses. We do both. What we don't do is metal. We'd rather tell you that up front than let you find out after you've already asked for a quote.
Chapter 03
The first Oklahoma season on a new roof
A new roof settles. Fasteners seat, sealant strips bond down in the summer heat, and the first hard spring storm is usually the first real test it gets. What we ask homeowners to watch for afterward is simple: granules showing up somewhere new in the gutters, a shingle tab that looks lifted at one corner, anything that looks different from the day we finished. If you see something, that first look is a phone call to (405) 360-4772, not a service charge.
The thing that quietly shortens a new roof faster than weather does is bad attic ventilation. Trapped heat and moisture cook the underside of a deck from the inside, and none of it is visible from the ground. We've been reading Central Oklahoma attics since 1969, and poor ventilation is usually the first thing we check when a roof that shouldn't be failing yet is failing anyway. License #: 80000246, same Norman address the whole time, if you'd rather stop by than call.
David Fries Roofing — Licensed and insured. License #: 80000246. Call (405) 360-4772.