When most people think about roof design, they are thinking about shingles. They may even be thinking about roof angle, gutters, and downspouts. These are the mundane and most common features of a roof, to be sure, but every roof is actually unique in design and composition. The thing that defines one roof from another is often the feature details. By this, we mean the chimneys, vents, dormer windows, and weather vanes that add detail to every Canton, MI home.
What features are installed in your roof right now? Most likely, you have at least two vents, maybe three, for the kitchen stove and ventilated bathrooms. Here in Michigan, there’s also a very good chance you have one or even two chimneys for fireplaces (and wood-burning stoves) that keep the home warm and the living room cozy year-round. Your home may have dormer windows, which are common, or attic vents to help circulate air around the calendar. Some homes even have skylights, satellite dishes, and other unique features.
But let’s say you want to change these features. Maybe you want to add a skylight or remove an old vent. Reinstalling your roof is the perfect time to do this.
Installing New Roof Features (or Removing Old Ones)
Roof features require roofing work to install or uninstall. Each time you want to, say, install a new bathroom vent or install a skylight, a section of your roof will need to be torn out and opened up to make space for the new feature. Then new shingles and brand new flashing will need to be installed to re-seal the new feature into place.
You can add anything from a skylight to a weather vane to mounting points for future roof projects, You can add a new fireplace and chimney to your home or
Likewise, removing an old vent or skylight will involve removing the flashing, tearing open the roof, and extracting the old feature. Then the roof must be rebuilt and the entire space shingled over to fully remove the old feature. This is serious roofing work and, objectively, it is small-scale roof installation. So why not combine the two projects?
Roof Installation and Roof Feature Installation
Roof installation is when your shingles are fully removed and a new layer of shingles are installed. Often, new insulation and underlayment decking are also installed, and sometimes beams are replaced or redesigned as needed. Roofs need to be reinstalled every 15 to 30 years, or after extensive storm damage in any year. In other words, your roof is rebuilt on a predictable schedule, one that you can align with other plans.
If you have been wanting to add or remove features from your roof and your roof is approaching a reinstallation date, this is a perfect opportunity. While you already have a team of roofers tearing up old shingles and about to install a whole new roof, why not take care of two tasks with one project?
Roof installation is the ideal time to install or uninstall the features of your roof. Roofers will already need to work around and reseal existing features and your roof will temporarily be wide-open for the installation of new roof features that will need to be shingled-around and sealed with flashing.
Roof Features for Your Home
Your Canton, MI home is yours to design and enjoy. This means that any roof features that you think would improve your residential experience – you have every reason to install them. Want a skylight in your kitchen to let in extra sunlight or give you a beautiful view of stormclouds? You can have that. Want to install a new fireplace in the den with its own chimney? You should have that, too.
Every bathroom can have its own vent, even if your original home design only ventilated one bathroom (or none at all). You can have better signal, better gutters, or even whole new architecture at the attic-level. Let’s explore the leading roof features that Canton homeowners choose to add to their homes.
1. Skylights
Skylights are a fantastic addition to any home – in the right place. Some homes have the perfect room or location for a skylight but there is no sky-facing window. Maybe your kitchen has the perfect roof access for a sunny skylight, or your sun room could get even more sun. Maybe your upstairs playroom could be better illuminated with natural light during the warm-weather months
Installing a skylight is a complex process in the middle of your roof’s lifespan, but it’s a natural addition to the installation of a new roof. The underlayment decking and shingles are already open and can be built custom around the shape and size of your new skylight. Professional roofing contractors will ensure that your skylights are well-insulated and properly sealed so they are an ideal addition to your roof.
2. Fireplace Chimneys
Michigan homes almost all feature a fireplace and, therefore, a chimney. But you might want more. If your home doesn’t have a fireplace, or if you only have a wood-burning stove and want a lovely bricked fireplace, your roofers are an essential part of building that first chimney. Of course, you don’t have to stop at the first fireplace and chimney.
If there’s a perfect place for a new fireplace in your home and a renovation project in the making, schedule your fireplace installation with your new roof installation. Your chimney can go up and be built neatly into the new roof at the same time. You can even build a cool double-sided fireplace sharing the same efficient chimney system.
3. Rooftop Vents
Ventilation is very important to the health of your house and your family. Vent illation keeps your attic both well-insulated and warm enough to repel piling snow. A vent from the kitchen stove ensures that humidity, char smoke, and cooking fumes out of the kitchen and keeps the air clear.
Each bathroom needs a rooftop vent with a fan to keep the air clean and clear out the shower steam. It’s amazing how many homes (and individual bathrooms) are not built with proper ventilation. Now is also a good time to investigate and repair insufficient bathroom vents.
Laundry room vents are the last type, and equally important. Downstairs laundry rooms tend to have a wall-side vent but upstairs laundry vents sometimes have rooftop vents. The key is to have a vent, or your laundry exhaust will just release lint and humidity into the laundry room. Your roofers can help you determine which vents and where will best improve the airflow in your home.
4. Antenna and Dish Mounting Points
Signal boosting can be an important part of modern streaming media, at-home professional work, and high-speed gaming. A roof with mounting points for a relaying antenna or a satellite dish, you won’t have to worry about precarious installations later. Instead, you have roofing pros who can help you choose exactly the right point for signal-installation mounting and place the initial mounting brackets in place.
5. Deck and Porch Roofing
Building a roof onto your deck or porch should be done professionally. You can have your roof extended or build an elegant lower layer of your roof to shade and weather-protect your deck. This is a great time to fully reimagine your deck railing along with the style of the support posts that may connect to the outer edge of your now-verandah roof.
6. Dormer Windows or Balcony
What’s even better is that you can fully reinvent the design of your attic-level rooms. If you have room underneath the slope of the roof, a roof reinstallation is the perfect time to add new windows in the form of dormer windows.
A dormer window is the type of window that sticks out from the roof slope with its own tiny roof over the window and sill. Because dormer windows must be built out of the roof surface, you’ll need the cooperation and hard work of a Canton, MI roof contracting team to make it happen. Dormer windows are a fantastic addition to attic-level rooms, bringing light, air, and a beautiful new look inside and out of your house.
7. Widow’s Walk
A truly big change to your roof might be the widow’s walk. A widow’s walk, sometimes called a widow’s watch, roofwalk, or captain’s watch, is a special flat-top balcony on the very top of your roof – with either designed safe access or no access at all. A widow’s walk gives you a beautiful and safe rooftop space to enjoy during the summer. Watch the 4th of July fireworks up there, do a little barbequing, or give your teenagers a great at-home escape to feel edghy while staying safe in a human-designed rooftop space.
Of course, you’ll need your roofers in on the plan to fully redesign the top area of your roof to be flat instead of sloped – and for the whole design to still be snow-safe when the white fluffy ice starts to pile up in the winter months. Your roofers would be delighted to help you design and add a widows walk to your home, with or without intended access.
8. Decorative Weather Veins
Every want a quaint traditional weather vane or something truly unique and interesting catching the wind on top of your roof? From brass roosters to unique rooftop art installations, roof rebuilding is the ideal time to have them installed. In fact, you can even have your weather vane properly secured and flashed into the structure of your roof so it likely won’t even blow away during the next legendary local storm.
9. Heat Exchanger
Last but certainly not least, a new roof means a new opportunity easily install a heat exchanger into your central air system. A heat exchanger brings in fresh air from outside, warms it, and then cycles it through the house. A heat exchanger ensures that a house closed up tight against drafts in the winter still gets plenty of fresh outside air – without letting the freezing tempearture of outside air getting into the house. It is also a roof feature that your roofers will need to make a space for, like a household rooftop vent.
Removing Unwanted Roof Features
You can also take out roof features that you don’t care for. It’s your Canton, MI home and it should suit your personal style perfectly – not the style or needs of previous residents. Whether these features are old and need replacing or you just don’t care for something and want it covered over with a solid roofing surface, we can make it happen.
1. Old Skylights
A skylight can be delightful, but only if it’s in the right place for you. There are some locations that homeowners just aren’t comfortable with, like a bedroom skylight with taller homes nearby. Then there are skylights that have aged without maintenance for so long that the skylight no longer provides you comfort. A cracked, dirty, or seemingly crooked skylight has the exact opposite effect of a sunny well-installed skylight: It can make you nervous to stand underneath – just like a ceiling fan that wobbles a little too much.
2. Crumbling Chimneys
Similarly, not all fireplaces or chimneys are in good shape. If there’s an old fireplace you plan to close up or have removed, it’s smart to remove that old brick chimney as well. Removing a smokestack from your indoor wood-burning stove will leave a hole that must be closed over by new roofing shingles. Taking down a crumbling old chimney can be a very important home improvement, repair, and maintenance choice and it will take the cooperation of your roofing contactors to make it happen safely.
3. Closed Vents
Home remodels sometimes result in a rooftop vent that is no longer needed. When you’re installing a new roof and adding vents where they are needed, you can also have vents that are now useless removed from the rooftop design. Taking out an old vent is even simpler than removing an old skylight or heavy brick chimney.
4. Legacy Decor
Did the previous homeowner install weather vane, satellite dish, or leave strange rooftop artwork in place? If it’s not your thing, then your roofers will courteously remove it during your next roof installation. Legacy decor and other installations that no longer serve a purpose can easily be removed when your roof is already under construction.
Coordinating Canton, MI Roof Installation with Home Renovation
Does your Canton, Michigan home need roof replacement in the next few years? Now is the perfect time to also plan your next wave of home renovations involving roof features. Adding or subtracting fireplaces, vents, skylights, and new roofing sections are best done when your roof is already being rebuilt. Save yourself time and money and make the whole process of improvements simpler for your roofers by combining roof-related home improvements with roof reinstallation. This way, your new roof features can be installed directly into your new roof design.