"Bring it back oiled." That was Gary's only condition when he lent me his roofing nailer for the garage roof, and he said it twice. My dad's condition for lending his air compressor was that I do the lifting, which at 64 he has decided is no longer his department. Between the two of them, they supplied the two most expensive tools on the job. The rest I bought, and now that it's been ten days, I have opinions about which purchases were smart.
Borrowed
Gary's coil roofing nailer. A roofing nailer puts a nail through a shingle in about the time it takes to blink. People hand-nailed roofs for decades, and you can, but with the nailer my dad and I laid all of Sunday's shingles in about six hours. The thing to learn is depth. Too much air pressure and the nail punches through the shingle. Too little and it stands proud and lifts the next course. Gary had us fire test nails into a scrap on the ground until the heads sat flush, then left the regulator alone for the rest of the day.
Dad's air compressor. It's the same one he's had since I was in middle school, and it kept up with one nailer without complaint. Two nailers would have been a different story. Gary insisted we run it on a heavy 12-gauge extension cord instead of the skinny orange one I grabbed first, and he was right: the compressor never struggled to start.
Gary's magnetic sweeper. Tessa ran it over the lawn and driveway after every few wheelbarrow loads and pulled up about a coffee can of old roofing nails. Nobody got a flat tire or a nail in a paw, which was the only goal.
Rented, sort of
The closest thing to a rental was the Bagster: $30 for the bag at the store and $145 for the pickup. It's a big woven bag that a truck lifts with a crane arm, so it has to sit somewhere the truck can reach. Ours sat partway down our 70-foot driveway, and Tessa wheelbarrowed every load to it. A single layer of 3-tab off a 12-by-20 garage fit with room to spare. For a one-car garage, I can't imagine needing a full dumpster.
Bought
- Roofing shovel, $38. The notched blade slides under shingles and lifts nails in the same motion. Worth every dollar on tear-off day.
- Flat bar, $14. For the nails the shovel missed and for prying off the old drip edge.
- Chalk line and blue chalk, $12. Gary snaps a line every few courses. I snapped one every course, and I'm not sorry.
- Harness kit with a roof anchor and rope, $89. More on this below.
- Roofing hatchet, $19, from Harbor Freight, "just in case." Also more below.
That's $172 in the tool column of the house sheet, on top of the $1,315 for materials and the Bagster.
What I'd skip, and what I wouldn't
The hatchet, easily. I bought it thinking I'd need to hand-nail along the rakes or the ridge. The nailer handled everything, and the hatchet went onto the pegboard in the basement with its tag still on. It's the kind of thing I buy when I'm nervous about a job, and I'm learning to recognize the feeling before I'm at the register.
The harness is harder to call. Our garage roof is a 4/12 pitch, shallow enough to walk around on comfortably, and the eaves are about 8 feet up. My dad didn't wear one. Gary told me I didn't need one. I wore it anyway, tied off to an anchor screwed through the deck near the ridge, both days. Would I skip it next time? On paper, maybe. In practice, I spent the weekend thinking about shingles instead of the edge of the roof, and for someone who gets uneasy on ladders, that was worth $89. The anchor came out before the ridge cap went on, and its screw holes got sealed and shingled over.
The nailer went back to Gary on Tuesday evening, wiped down, with three drops of oil in the air fitting. He checked. Then he checked again, and nodded, which from Gary is a standing ovation.
