Materials
There is a run of posts on the main roofing materials you will meet in this valley: standard asphalt shingle, the thicker luxury shingle that imitates shake or slate, real wood shingle, and metal in its various forms. Each one covers how long the material tends to last in our heat, what maintenance it wants, and what it looks like when it is failing.
I wrote them because homeowners were being sold materials without being told the trade-offs.
Maintenance and lifespan
A few pieces on keeping a roof going: how long the major parts of a house last, the five signs a shingle roof is done, what weather-protecting products actually do, and the simple habits that add years to any roof. Gutters get two posts of their own, one on cleaning and one on guards.
None of it is complicated, but most of it gets ignored until there is water in the hallway.
Cost, in general terms
Two posts look at what drives the cost of a new roof and how to think about the true cost of metal over its life. I keep the numbers general because every roof is different and any figure I put here would be wrong for your house.
The right number comes from a walk on your roof, not a blog.
Holiday lights
Every December I get calls about cracked tiles and torn shingles from light installations, so there are three posts on doing it safely: the injury side, the how-to, and the roof-friendly methods for tile and shingle.
Read them in November, not on the day.
Solar and the future
A handful of posts on solar roofing tiles, a curved concrete roof that generates power, and the color trends coming out of the metal roofing industry. These are more for the curious than the practical, but the questions keep coming, so the posts stay up.
If you are putting panels on an existing roof, read the warranty page first.
How to use the blog
Read the material posts before choosing a roof, the maintenance posts every fall, and the holiday posts before you get the ladder out. If a post raises a question about your own house, the inspection page explains how I would answer it properly, on the roof rather than on a screen.