shingles roof install by Pro Roofing

Installing your new roof, roofing over an old roof

Roofing over an existing roof eliminates the need for underlayment and saves the time and effort of tearing off the old roof. However, if the old one is too irregular for a smooth finish, tear it off. Otherwise, the new one wont look right and wont protect as well. Roofs are heavy; local codes may […]

slate roof repair

The pervasiveness of American slating

The pervasiveness of American slating references here, particularly in this century, is unquestionable. American architectural books and construction guides, which were well known in Canada, often contained advice to slaters or to roof replace contractors. The Canadian Architect and Builder in answer to inquiries concerning slate drew on American pocketbook authorities such as Kidder and […]

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Implications Causing Roofers to Enter Slate Business

One of the implications of other roofers entering the slating business was that the importance of experience passed-down from one roof company to another was reduced while the technical direction of trade journals and building product suppliers, that is the slate quarries, was correspondingly enhanced. This evolution in the slating trade meant that Canadian slating […]

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Laying Slate Roofs

The business of slating consisted chiefly in covering the roofs of buildings with slate and all the variations in sizes, laps and fastenings that that could entail. Slate covering was also influenced to an extent by other roof elements, particularly the form, structure, under sheathing and flashing. For any given historical period in Canada the […]

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The Advances of Slate Craftsmanship in the 1920s

Achieving an antique roofing appearance in the 1920s also produced a degree of roofing services slate craftsmanship unrivalled in other eras, for old slate roofs implied no evident use of metal flashing. When slate replaced, or actually covered, metal for hips and ridges, it had to be cut to specific angles and applied in various […]

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Renewal of the Graduated Slate

It was not only effect but also respect for the inherent qualities of the materials of building that encouraged the renewal of the graduated slate roof in roof replacement. In a lecture on “the Art of Building,” M.H. Baillie Scott, a leader with Charles Voysey in the promotion of the artistic house, urged the study […]

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Attractiveness of Slate Roofs in the Beginning of the 20th century

From 1908, the graduated slate roof received notice in the building periodicals as a way of beautifying slate roofs “marked off into distressingly regular squares or lozenges.” The idea was an Arts and Crafts one extolled in the American magazine, The Craftsman, and first brought to the attention of Canadians in an article on “Attractiveness […]

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Various Slate Colours and Designs in History

North American architects designing in the Queen Anne mode from the mid-1870s shared the English preference for one-colour red roofs. The shift in focus appeared in the pattern books as early as 1878. Modern Dwellings, based on a scribes of designs Henry Hudson Holly had published in Harper’s Magazine, noted, “Red for roofs seems to […]

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Slate Roofing History – More on the Blog

Variously cut slate to heighten roof decoration was strongly discouraged by the promoters of Queen Anne and just as strongly ignored by its mass interpreters. The pretty effect of tiles pointed to form a saw tooth line or rounded like fish scales was admitted by J.J. Stevenson, but he added “ourВ architecture lately has trusted too […]

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Single colour slate

Single colour slate with scaling in the Queen Anne Revival The Queen Anne Revival mode led the return to single colour slate work. Queen Anne style had a little to do with Queen Anne and much to do withВ many other countries and monarchs. The style as it evolved under English architect Richard Norman Shaw and […]

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