Tackling the Job: 5 Steps to Installing a New Roof

When Joe Hamstra is not tackling a roofing job, he likely is tackling a steer or tending to a hay field.

He takes care of two farms in rural Monee—5 miles south of Frankfort­—one owned by his father (Harold Hamstra Jr.), the other his personal pride a joy.

“I raise cattle,” Joe Hamstra said. “I’ll have 12 this year, all steers, all for organic meat. I sell the meat, mostly to family and friends. My father bought his farm in 1998 and I bought mine in 2004.”

Why?

“To take a break from roofing,” he said, a grin crossing his face. “It’s always been a dream of his (to farm), so when he got into it, I got into it just the same.”

Joe Hamstra also runs Hamstra Enterprises, a Frankfort-based, family-owned roofing company in business since 1979. He said the job of putting a new roof on a home typically can be broken down into five basic steps:

1. Strip the old roofing and replace any worn plywood.

2. Install a rubber layer of water and ice shield in appropriate areas.

“It’s required in most municipalities to have it, at least on the gutter edge,” Hamstra said. “We also always put it in the valleys, around skylights and around chimneys. We think it’s more important to have it there than on the gutter edge.

“We see those are leak areas. If you have the ice and water shield in there, it won’t leak. It will get you buy for a lot longer.”

3. Install felt underlayment over the entire roof.

4. Install new shingles.

“We shingle everything that we tear off in a day so nobody is ever left overnight exposed to the weather,” Hamstra said. “That way I can sleep at night.”

5. Replace counter flashing, if necessary. This is a metal wrap that butts up against the brick at the bottom of a chimney to prevent leaking.