Compare roofing quotes line by line, before the sun and the freeze do

Plenty of houses from the seventies and eighties carry a second layer of shingle, laid over the first by an owner who wanted to skip a tear-off. Stripping two is close to twice the labor and twice the disposal, and a quote priced for a single layer on a two-layer roof is not finished.

Decades of attic heat and winter frost can leave the sheathing brittle or delaminated, and nobody sees that until the roof is off. A price per sheet, and the count the quote assumes, bounds that risk. Silence leaves it to be settled on the day.

At this altitude the sun works on anything left exposed, and a felt underlayment that sits uncovered through a dry week is not the same product afterward. Synthetic tolerates it; felt does not. "Underlayment included" does not tell you which one is going down.

Winter here freezes most nights and thaws most afternoons, and the melt runs to the cold edge and stops. Whether the membrane runs the eaves only, the valleys, the north-facing slopes, or around every penetration is a different roll count and a different day, and a quote should name it rather than assume it.

Where a dormer meets the slope or the garage roof meets the wall, the step flashing can be replaced or sealed and left. Sealing is quicker, and under a freeze that returns nightly for four months, sealant is the first thing to let go.

A chimney through a slope that faces the afternoon sun takes the worst of the ultraviolet and the widest swing between noon and midnight. Counterflashing cut into the mortar, a sound crown and a cricket on the uphill side are separate work, and they are regularly absent from a headline number.

Attic heat here comes from a sun that is stronger than the thermometer suggests, and it ages the shingle from underneath. Reinstalling the vents that were there does nothing about it. Adding intake and exhaust is real work, and the quote should say whether it is doing that or putting things back as found.

The metal at the eave and the starter course under the first row are where ice forms on winter mornings and where the melt refreezes by nightfall. Both are cheap, both are easy to leave off a quote, and both are where failure begins when they are missing.

Gutters here carry ice for weeks at a time and pull away from the fascia under the weight. Whether they come down and go back up, get replaced with the roof, or get worked around is a line the quote should state.

Each city and county along the Front Range issues its own permit and inspects on its own schedule, and some require a specific shingle class. Whether the contractor pulls it, bills it separately, or leaves it to you are three different arrangements.

The manufacturer stands behind the shingle. Somebody has to stand behind the installation, which is what gives way after a few hundred freeze and thaw cycles. A material warranty without a written labor warranty leaves that half open.

A dumpster on a driveway, a magnet sweep for nails across a lawn and a gravel side yard, protection for the air conditioning unit and the flower beds under the eaves. Small lines, and most of what people complain about after the crew has left.