2651 Gemini Drive

Atlas Pinnacle Pristine Coastal Granite — 2651 Gemini Drive, Orion Township

This Orion Township roof replacement on Gemini Drive was a straightforward full replacement on a house that had simply run its course. The shingles were somewhere between 20 and 25 years old, and it showed. Severe granule loss across every slope, cracking throughout, and the ridge cap shingles had lost their granules entirely down to bare asphalt. At that point the roof isn't protecting much. We also found compromised chimney apron flashing where the metal had been bent away from the brick and packed with old caulk to compensate, an exposed fastener at the chimney base, and two deteriorated pipe boots. The satellite dish brackets on the front slope got pulled and discarded as part of the job. Everything pointed to a roof that needed to come off.

Tear-off on a 2,064 square foot roof goes fast when the crew is organized. We stripped everything down to the deck, inspected the sheathing, and got the new system started from the bottom up. Two courses of Epistik ice and water shield went in at the eaves and through the valleys before anything else. That self-adhering membrane is your first line of defense at the spots where water is most likely to back up or concentrate. From there, Summit 60 synthetic underlayment ran up both slopes to the ridge, covering the full field of the roof. It's a heavier underlayment than the standard 15-pound felt and lays flat without wrinkling, which matters when you're nailing shingles over it. Thirty pieces of premium drip edge went around the perimeter to give the edges a clean termination and direct runoff into the gutters.

For shingles, Vicki went with the Atlas Pinnacle Pristine line in Coastal Granite. We installed 67 bundles across the field, which covers the 2,064 square foot roof with appropriate overlap and waste factored in. The Pinnacle Pristine is a solid architectural shingle with a heavier build than the entry-level options. Coastal Granite is a blended gray tone that reads neutral against brick and works well on homes in this part of Oakland County. Pro-Cut starter shingles went in at the eaves and rakes before the field shingles, and Pro-Cut hip and ridge cap finished the hips and peaks.

The chimney work on this job was done right. Instead of bending the apron flashing against the face of the brick and sealing the gap with caulk, which is what the previous installation had done and why it failed, we cut and bent new flashing to tuck properly into the mortar joints. Step flashing went in along both sides where the chimney meets the slope, and the exposed fastener at the base was addressed during the flashing replacement. That chimney should be solid for the life of this roof. The two pipe boots were replaced with new boots and covers, and both bathroom exhaust vents were replaced so the bathrooms vent to the outside rather than dumping moisture into the attic.

Ventilation on this house had a problem worth noting. The attic had ridge vent, gable vents, and perforated soffit vents all running at the same time. That sounds like a lot of ventilation, but gable vents and ridge vent together cause short-circuiting. Air moves laterally between the gable openings and bypasses the soffit-to-ridge airflow path entirely. The fix is to block the gable vents from the inside with wood so all the intake comes through the soffits and exhausts at the ridge the way it's supposed to. We installed 17 units of OmniRidge Pro ridge vent, hand-nailed along 68 linear feet of ridge. The soffit vents stay active, the gable vents get blocked, and the attic breathes the way it should.

Roofing Army completed this Orion Township roof replacement for $11,999. For a home off Clarkston Road in this part of Oakland County, that's a complete system, not just shingles over old underlayment. Everything from the deck up was addressed, the chimney flashing was done properly, and the ventilation issue was corrected. If you're in the Orion Township or Lake Orion area and your roof is pushing 20 years, it's worth having someone get up there and take a look before it starts showing up on your ceilings.