Walk the blocks around Elizabeth Park and you can read a century of roofing history without leaving the sidewalk. Bellingham's Columbia neighborhood is one of the city's oldest, its streets lined with Craftsman bungalows and foursquares from the early 1900s, shaded by mature trees that were saplings when the roofs first went on. Alpine Exteriors reroofs these homes for what they are: hundred-year-old structures under Pacific Northwest skies, worth doing right.
What We Find on Columbia Roofs
Tear-offs in this neighborhood are archaeology. It is common to strip two or even three layers of old composition shingle — sometimes with the original cedar shakes still underneath — before reaching skip sheathing that was never meant to hold modern roofing. We plan for that: our Columbia bids include re-sheathing with plywood where the deck needs it, because nailing new architectural shingles into gapped hundred-year-old boards is how a twenty-year roof becomes a ten-year roof.
The tree canopy that makes these streets beautiful also feeds the moss. Big maples and evergreens drop needles and shade the north slopes, and in Bellingham's long damp season a shaded shingle roof can green over in two or three winters. We counter with algae-resistant shingles, zinc strips at the ridges, and a hard rule about clean, properly sized gutters — most of the rot we repair at eaves in this neighborhood started with a clogged gutter, not a failed shingle.