who is good with picking colors???

[jinman]

If you have a skylight, take it out and through it away!!!!!!!!

Eddie, he has 5 huge skylights. Are you suggesting that he remove those and remodel the interior of his house? That seems rather extreme. I know we get skylight damage from hail around here, but I'm not sure where the OP lives. Maybe you just meant to replace them with new skylights. This is a major change to the OP's house.

 

[Lloyd_E]

mx - rebuild in PhotoShop. Look for your request a little later. If you want the look of it "being there for years" I would start looking at old historic houses and interpret the colour patterns for roof colour against brick plus all the wood trim/window colour etc. Remember it is an interpretation not an accurate restoration... you can change a few things to make it "your own" - ie: solid red door - for me it's a little bit of spark or excitement in the facade of brick.

Eddie - this is still purely subjective - and can be interpretive as 'good' or 'bad' - I like or you like... etc. ...

"Your roofers gave you good advice. I'm going to assume that they are pros and do this all the time. I'm sure that they have seen bad color choices and been embarassed by those jobs. I know that I have in remodel jobs that I've done. I'm also sure that they have seen good choices and been proud of those jobs. Did they give you any refrences? Did you ask for some and go look at what they did?

Grey and dark brown would be the area of color I would consider with your red brick. I like galvalume for it's reflective property, but find that it looks way too industrial for a residential home. Same thing with white. Black is too much and would never look good. Red has a history of fading. I've seen plenty of red roofs that look great on old barns, white buildings and natural rock. Not on red brick. Are you going to paint your brick?"


What mx has to consider is the "feel" and look he is going after. If he wants "rustic' than he should define rustic and use that as a criteria. MX the copper metallic is beautiful but will never colour down to a green copper roof that is historic appropriate vis-a-vis what would have been used with early brick housing - either cedar shake or copper standing seamed roofs. There's a house here that has the new copper metallic roof. I've driven by it over the last 25+ years and it looks 'new' will never age. It's exciting to see and when the sun hits it at the correct angle it can be seen for miles! Again it's an interpretation - looks great but is not timeless.

If you use history as a criteria you can't go wrong. All of the styles we strive for can be reduced to half a dozen that repeat over the centuries. Another tool to use is the concept of environment/materials at hand to dictate design; ie: stones houses vs cedar shakes vs clapboard - all had their reason - based on availability of materials. But I would still look seriously at historic homes for reference...

 

[Lloyd_E]

pic...

 

[jinman]

I have not looked at the other links you've been provided, but Mueller Incorporated has a full range of colors and style in their photo gallery.

 

[EddieWalker]

Eddie, he has 5 huge skylights. Are you suggesting that he remove those and remodel the interior of his house? That seems rather extreme. I know we get skylight damage from hail around here, but I'm not sure where the OP lives. Maybe you just meant to replace them with new skylights. This is a major change to the OP's house.

My issues with skylights are twofold. First, I hate that they are like open doors in the roof that make it extremly hard to heat and cool a house. The attic is where you gain the most in your insulation. The walls are second, but the windows in the wall ruin a lot of what you get out of the walls. Most double pain windows are only going to give you an R value of 4. So if you have 2x4 walls, you get an R 13 with areas of R4. Guess what matters? Spend more on your walls, foam them, wrap the house, do whatever you want, the R4 windows are what you are fighting.

The ceiling should be R30 at the least, with R60 being ideal. Having skylight means that your R60 ceilng has massive holes in it with ZERO R value. Unless you have skylights with double paned glass, then maybe you have R4 in your ceiling.

Add to the very common problem of skylights leaking when it rains. If it doesn't rain today, it will. If you don't see it, that doesn't mean it's not leaking. It might be, if not, it will.

I'm fine if you don't agree, but I've been called to fix way too many leaking skylights, or roof leaks that are because of skylights. What makes it really fun is the leak doesn't always happen around the skylight. The rafter can carry the water to other areas of the roof. Even other rooms and in the worse case, into the walls. Leaks into the walls are almost impossible to know about until the wall is rotted away, or termites find the moisture and take over.

The only thing causes more damage to your then a skylight is pressure washing your house!!!!!

Nothing is worse for energy efficiency then a skylight other then not having insulation.

For those who think you are saving money because of the free light you get, figure that the cost of the sklight doesn't equal the energy usage of lighting the room when you are in there. You can't even compart the additional loss of energy from that massive hole in your roof. Then there is no way to figure out what it will cost to repair the damage from the leak with it happens.

My suggestion is to never put in a skylight, and if you have one, get rid of it. If you are putting on a new roof, that is the ideal time to get rid of the skylight. There isn't any good reason to have them, and a whole list of reasons not to.

That is my opinion.

Eddie

 

[Lloyd_E]

Eddie, Interesting point about sky lights and "holes" in the roof regarding energy - never really thought about it. I was at a lecture regarding restoration of periods homes. Topic of R-values in windows came up. The lecturer said the very best you will get is around r-5 to r-8 value - the expense could run $20 to $60+K depending on the number of windows. He said you would never get your return back on the investment. If you re-pointed the windows and added good quality wooden storm windows you could get r-4 to r-5 at a fraction of the cost while retaining the look and authenticity of the period home. Those in the room, that had put off window replacement breathed a sigh of relieve. The biggest issue he talked about is stopping drafts in the house. You can insulate but if you prevent air infiltration you can save a lot of money... now if I can get the kids to close the doors behind them!

 

[beppington]

Eddie, Interesting point about sky lights and "holes" in the roof regarding energy - never really thought about it. I was at a lecture regarding restoration of periods homes. Topic of R-values in windows came up. The lecturer said the very best you will get is around r-5 to r-8 value - the expense could run $20 to $60+K depending on the number of windows. He said you would never get your return back on the investment. If you re-pointed the windows and added good quality wooden storm windows you could get r-4 to r-5 at a fraction of the cost while retaining the look and authenticity of the period home. Those in the room, that had put off window replacement breathed a sigh of relieve. The biggest issue he talked about is stopping drafts in the house. You can insulate but if you prevent air infiltration you can save a lot of money... now if I can get the kids to close the doors behind them!

Door springs are pretty cheap at Home Depot/ Lowes :thumbsup: I installed them on all our exterior doors so our cats can't sneak out when we've closed a door "not quite".

 

[mjncad]

USAA and have bent over backwards to help me out but now they have to put my mortgage company on the checks and dealing with Chase is like pulling teeth out of chickens. They have single handedly held me up for the past month. They wont sign off on anything until the work is done and how do you do the work with out the money to do it?

Based on my experience with a Chase credit card, and a friend's with a Chase checking and IRA accounts; I think they are the most incompetent boobs in the banking industry. They still send me privacy notices every now and then for a credit card account I closed years ago.

Chase = Idiots!

pic...

Yep, terracotta = puppy puke brown.


Another thing to consider with a metal roof in snow country are those little tabs designed to minimize avalanching. One usually sees these roof tabs over entry ways. I've seen them used on houses with and without gutters.

 

[mx842]

I know I really like the color of my house with the surrounding canopy of green, but I don't think I want that color green on my shop. It the shop were built and styled to look like the house, then green would be okay, but I'd have to add a lot of insulation. When I build my shop, I'll go with with a light tan, white or galvalume roof because of Texas heat. Of course, the shop won't be right near to my house and it will have no trees around it.

My roof on my house is really a hunter green rather than the brighter green that Lloyd posted. Also, after many years it takes on a dull tinge and blends even better with the trees in my estimation. One of the problems with your house is the expanse of roof that isn't broken up with peaks and valleys. Whatever color roof you select, you are gonna get a bunch of it. I do highly recommend gutters, but on the back of your house, gutter cleaning will be a challenge with the height, so try to get leaf guards if possible.

EDIT: One other thing that can have a dramatic effect is the style of metal roof. Will you go with U-panel, R-panel, Concealed Fastener, or ???. Many residences like the CF panels because the screws don't show and the ridges are smaller than R-panel or U-panel. Certainly, corrugated roofing tends to make it look like a barn, so I'd steer clear of anyone who suggests that.

EDIT 2: Just one more thing and I'll shut up. A metal roof with a bit of dust on it is slicker than owl poo. If you have to go up on the roof alot to service your skylights, get ready for some pucker muscle exercises. That one roof area in back has a really severe pitch. I think I'd want a lifeline before venturing out there on a metal roof. With shingles, you have some traction, but with metal roofs dust is like putting talcom powder on a slide. Just something to consider. . . .

Wow that looks nice. Do you know the manufacturer of that medal? everybody uses Union around here because they have a plant close by. They have evergreen and Marine green and it appears from your pic Hunter green is somewhere in-between.

Is that a basement under the porch. Looking back now I wish I had went up 4 or 5 more courses of block and put one under mine. I hate houses with close crawl spaces so I ran an extra 3 courses to get it up off the ground a little and once I looked at it I could have dug down a few feet and poured a pad and I would have had a lot more room to play with.

Wisely noted...the pitch on the front of the house and the garage is super steep and even with singles you don't want to do a tap dance on that part of the house. The back is not too bad and I'll have to get up there from time to time to clean my chimney so I should be okay.

When I built the house I wanted to put dormer windows on the front to break up the lines but I ran out of money right in the middle of framing because one of the big hurricanes that hit SC doubled the price of lumber and plywood tripled in price overnight. I had to redo my plans because the construction loan I had could not be changed so I had to do what I could to get it under roof.

And oh yeah, gutter guards for sure.

 

[jinman]

Wow that looks nice. Do you know the manufacturer of that medal?

The company that my metal came from is out of business now. They used to be in Grapevine, TX, but were bought out and their old factory site now manufactures flooring products. Anyhow, my metal is 26 ga. and very close to the Deep Green color in this photo from the Mueller Inc. website.

Also, you asked about the basement under my deck. The photo before is actually the back side of my house and under the deck is the garage. On the other side of the house, is a walkout basement. My house is very much a multi-level house. In the last couple of years we've added decks to wrap around all of the house and added a bathroom onto the lower walkout basement/rec room. Attached is a partial shot of the front side just as construction was completed.