Slate Roofing
Most slate roofs that get condemned did not need replacing. We repair with matching salvaged tile, and we will tell you honestly which situation you are in.
A slate roof that is failing at the flashing, the nails or a section of tile is a repair, not a replacement. Slate itself commonly lasts a century or more. The reason so many homeowners are quoted a full tear-off is that few contractors will take on slate work at all.
Slate is the material we get asked about least often and rescue most often. The pattern is almost always the same. A homeowner with a hundred year old roof gets three quotes, all three are for a complete tear-off and a switch to asphalt, and nobody has explained why. Usually the reason is not the slate. It is that stripping a roof and stapling on shingles is work any crew can do, and repairing slate is not.
What actually fails on these roofs is rarely the stone. Slate outlives the fasteners that hold it and the metal that flashes it. Nails rust through and tiles slip, which looks alarming from the ground and is a straightforward fix. Valley and chimney flashing corrodes long before the tile does. Someone walks on the roof without knowing how to, and cracks a dozen slates in an afternoon. Each of those is a repair, and each of them gets quoted as a new roof.
The Rensselaer County hill towns and southern Vermont have more original slate still in service than anywhere else we work, which is no accident. The Vermont quarry belt runs right through Bennington County. A lot of these roofs came off the ground within twenty miles of the house they sit on, and matching salvaged tile from the same region is what makes a repair disappear rather than announce itself.
What we handle
Ordered roughly by how often it turns out to be what the roof actually needs.
Individual slates refitted with copper hooks or nails, matched for colour, thickness and size from salvage. Done right the repair is invisible from the ground within a season of weathering.
Valleys, chimney saddles, step flashing and ridges reformed in copper or lead-coated copper. This is where most slate roofs are genuinely leaking, and it is fixable without touching the field of the roof.
Where the fasteners across a whole slope have gone, the slate can often be carefully taken off, sorted, and relaid over new underlayment with the sound tile reused and salvage making up the difference.
New quarried slate where the budget and the building justify it, and honest advice about synthetic slate where they do not. We will tell you which we would choose in your position.
How it runs
The first job is working out whether you have a repair or a replacement, because that answer is worth a great deal of money to you.
Slate is walked with hook ladders and roof jacks, never boots straight on tile. We check fastener condition, tile soundness by sounding, flashing, and the underside from the attic where we can get to it.
You get a straight answer and the evidence for it. If the slate is sound and the nails have gone, we say so. If the roof is genuinely finished, we say that too rather than selling you a repair that will not hold.
Colour, thickness, size and weathering all have to line up or the repair reads as a patch forever. We source salvage rather than settling for close enough.
Tiles set with copper, flashings formed to the actual condition, and no sealant standing in for metalwork. Copper because it will still be there when the next generation looks at this roof.
Why us
If the slate is sound you will hear that from us, even though the replacement is the bigger job. A roof that needs six tiles and a valley does not need thirty squares of asphalt.
Vermont and New York slate vary by quarry in colour and thickness. Matching properly is most of what makes a historic repair look right, and it takes longer than ordering a pallet.
More slate gets destroyed by people walking on it wrong than by weather. Hook ladders and jacks, always, including on the first assessment visit.
Reviews
Google reviews from customers we did slate roofing for.
Upstate KC Builders did a great job repairing our 80 year old slate roof. They were very quick and responsive and delivered a professional estimate to us. Showed up on the scheduled day and were quick to comeback when I asked about an additional item. I highly recommend!
Stephen came out to fix some slates on our roof and did a great job. He was professional and prepared and responded timely to messages. He was able to replace some slates and stop the leak we had. Very professional and would recommend to all!
Great to work with, did a great job finding and repairing leaks in a slate roof around a chimney. Every put in the effort to find the correct size tiles for the roof and add new supports to the chimney.
Where we work
Slate takes us furthest from base. The heaviest concentrations are in the Rensselaer County hill towns, southern Vermont around Bennington, Arlington and Manchester, and the older Berkshire properties near Lenox, Stockbridge and Williamstown, but we take slate work anywhere in our area.
We cover Albany County, NY, Rensselaer County, NY, Saratoga County, NY, Schenectady County, NY, Bennington County, VT, Berkshire County, MA.
Questions
Often it is not. Get a second opinion from someone who actually does slate work before committing to a tear-off. Slipped tiles, rusted nails and failed flashing all look like a dying roof from the ground and are all repairable. A genuinely finished slate roof does exist, usually where the slate itself has started delaminating across the whole slope, but it is much rarer than the quoting suggests.
Depending on the quarry it came from, anywhere from 75 to 200 years. Vermont slate sits at the long end of that. The fasteners and flashings will need attention two or three times across that span, which is normal maintenance rather than failure. It is entirely usual for the stone on a roof to outlast several sets of the metal holding it on.
Usually yes, through salvage. Colour, thickness and size all have to line up, and weathered salvage matches an old roof far better than new stone, which sits brighter than its neighbours for years. Some colours are harder to find than others, and if we cannot match yours properly we will tell you before starting rather than after.
If your house already has a slate roof, then no, it was framed for it. The question only arises when putting slate onto a structure that never carried it, and there we would want the framing assessed before quoting. Synthetic slate is the usual answer where the structure will not take the real thing.
A targeted repair is normally a small fraction of a full replacement, which is precisely why it is worth getting the second opinion. Reslating a whole slope sits closer to replacement cost. We price the repair and the replacement separately where both are genuinely on the table, so you are comparing real numbers rather than being steered.
Yes, and several towns we work in add historic district review on top of the normal permit, particularly around Manchester and Dorset in Vermont and Lenox, Stockbridge and Williamstown in Massachusetts. Matching material and method matters to those reviews, which is another reason salvage sourcing is not optional.
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Leak repair, storm damage, and full tear-offs on asphalt, metal and slate. We find the actual source, not the wet spot.
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Crown molding, wainscoting, built-ins and casing. The detail work that separates a renovation from a repair.
Learn more about Finish Carpentry & Trim WorkGet a second opinion from someone who repairs slate for a living. We will tell you honestly what it needs, even when that is less work for us.
Tell us about your project and we will get back to you with a written estimate.
