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A hard-working metal roofing installation crew is always looking for a job it can hang its hat on. This residential project in Northern Illinois … the crew could literally hang its hat on the peaks!
This project may look familiar as it appeared in the eighth edition of “the idea book,” published just a couple months ago. Cronin Roofing and Construction of Shirland, Ill., has been installing stone-coated metal roofing from DECRA Roofing Systems for about 10 years, landing about 5-6 jobs annually. So far, in 2012, Mike Cronin says his crews are on their 13th job — some of those have come about because of the success of this project.
“As soon as I saw it, I put a bid in on it,” he says. “There were other contractors we had to go up against, but with the style of the architecture, I knew we had the perfect product.”
The roof being replaced was a cedar shake that had run its course and needed to be replaced. The DECRA Villa Tile, in Rustico Clay, was chosen to complement the home’s design and color.
According to Cronin, it works!
“A lot of houses, people will drive up and say, ‘Nice windows,’ or ‘Nice landscaping,’” he says. “This house, people drive up and say, ‘Wow! Nice roof!’”
And it’s easy to see why. The job took 2-1/2 months to complete. Each of the turrets or cupolas took a couple weeks. “We had two guys up on a basket and one guy on the ground cutting his brains out,” Cronin says. “It was the last part of the roof we did because we knew it was going to be time consuming. We also knew this product on those cupolas was going to make the roof pop. It did.”
Cronin says the cupolas, which sweep out on the bottom because of a decreasing radius, are the attention grabber of this project.
Safety was a concern from the start on this project. With the steep pitch of the cupolas, a boom was required to safely install the roofing. For the precision cutting required, Cronin’s crew used a Skil saw with an abrasive metal cut blade. The crews discovered that snips from Weiss Tool held up the best cutting the stone-coated steel. “Obviously, there was a lot of detail work,” Cronin says.
Cronin says he and his crew are extremely proud of the installation. Most importantly, the homeowner is proud and happy.
