Replacing Damaged Roof Shingles

 

SCOTT: Well, I tell you what; we’ve had some nasty thunder storms here in the northeast this summer and – as luck would have it – a big, old maple tree fell on the roof of my house. Most of the damage that was done, fortunately for me, was done to the shed roof which is attached to the back of my garage but …

 

TOM: I hope you weren’t home when it fell down, Matt.

 

SCOTT: I was. As a matter of fact, I was getting dressed and I heard this big thud. I thought the trash cans had gotten blown over by the heavy winds but it wasn’t. It was the tree that fell on the roof. But fortunately, nobody was hurt and …

 

TOM: Alright.

 

SCOTT: The damage was relatively minor.

LESLIE: You’re lucky.

 

SCOTT: I mean it ripped the satellite dish off the corner of the roof and bent the gutter but, you know, all stuff that I could fix. It actually broke the fascia board, you know, in front of the soffit on the overhang. But my one question that I have – and I’ve even repaired the bent drip edge as well – I’ve got some damaged shingles. Now, this roof is relatively newly shingled. They’re architectural shingles and I have extra shingles from when I did it myself. And my question is now, with some of these shingles damaged and needing to be replaced – not the whole roof – how do you replace shingles in the middle of the roof?

 

TOM: Ah. There’s a trick of the trade for that and what you need is a flat bar. It’s like a flat pry bar where it’s sort of like curved on one end and flat on the other and used to pull out nails. And you take the flat bar and you work it under the shingle and you actually go up to right where that nail is going through the shingle, bend it down and pop the nail out; then go above it and pull the nail out. If you do that carefully across one row, you will have loosened up those shingles and, as you know, once you get the …

 

LESLIE: So you can get underneath it.

 

TOM: Once you get the first one out, then it’s a piece of cake. What you need is a flat bar to do that.

 

SCOTT: I think I may have what you’re talking about. Is that – I call it a cat’s paw. Is that the same type of bar?

 

TOM: No. No, no, no, no. It’s not a cat’s paw. No, a cat’s paw is round and that’s designed to kind of go down from the top. A flat bar is essentially that; it’s a tool that’s about two inches wide, 1/8-inch thick and about 12 inches long and it has a groove at the end that slides under the shingle with a little V-groove in it and you can wiggle it …

 

LESLIE: Not called a pry bar?

 

TOM: Well, it’s a little bit like a pry bar but it’s not like a crowbar. It’s not round like that; it’s flat.

 

SCOTT: Thank you.

 

TOM: Alright, Scott. Good luck with that project. Thanks so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT.