Here is one of our custom copper projects we did at 3565 N. E. 25th in Portland Oregon for a General Contractor named DAW Remodeling Co. rebuilding a house that was later sold to a former client of min e named David Lesh, an Attorney: http://davidlesh.net . The first photo shows the granulated asphalt flat roofing they used before. The roofer then covered it with a layer of water and ice shield.

 Unlike the standing seam metal roofing you are familiar seeing, our specialty is to design roof covers as seamless and clean looking as possible, while still attached strong enough to withstand high wind situations. In the photo on the left the arched roof was covered with rusty steel sheet metal and had been covered over by some asphalt composite flat roofing material. I had instructed the roofing contractor to remove the cover down to the original wood roof deck. Then to cover that wood with sheets of 1/4" hardwood plywood for a nice smooth arched surface to lay the copper over. Then to cover that with a rubber Water & Ice Shield underlayment, so that no nails or screws could push up and rub against the new copper sheets from inside. For some strange reason they choose a granulated underlayment, so I had to use this fiberglass fabric to shield the copper from the rocks on the underlaynemt.

We made these panels from 3' x 10' sheets of the 20oz copper. We bent a 1.5" seam across the bottom and top edge to hook into each other. Between those two panels is another strip of copper that hooks over the top edge of a panel and is nailed down to the roof. Then the next panel hooks over that. That means there is 6 layers of copper sheet metal over one of these seams.

The top center panel had to be slid over another sheet of the 1/4" hardwood plywood to keep the curve true, and over the track seams on both sides. We made this sheet wider in the back by 1", but it was still such a tight fit we had to hammer the panel back into place from this point shown above left. Above right shows it complete with the edge metal formed and installed. It is held in place with stainless steel screws.

A future contractor would have a very hard time removing this copper roof cover, but hopefully that will not be needed again. The cost was $3,100 for the 155+ square feet of copper used to cover this arched entry roof.

Here is a couple shots of the copper roof a few years later.

This is a funny story about this house; around 10 years earlier I had replaced the gutters on a house for David Lesh on the corner of 17th and Fremont at 3443 N.E. 17th. The gutters and downspouts were done in white pre-painted aluminum to match the house trim paint. I had featured the special work of his house on our web site since it's beginning:

He recently sold that house and had bought another one only a few blocks away on a quieter and larger corner lot The funny part was how the General Contractor; Dan White of DAW Remodeling Co. was rebuilding this house shown below to sell and was having the roofing replaced. The arched entry way was covered with rusty steel under some composite flat roofing. His roofer had found our web site and had me cover it the with the 20oz copper sheets we use. The gutters were down, so I asked the Dan of DAW about having me install the gutters in aluminum or perhaps a matching copper, but he said he already had a gutter contractor lined up to do it:

It seems that the new steel gutters that were installed were so crappy that within a year Mr. Lesh contracted with me to replace them. They were clogged and overflowing. I know we do much better gutters, but since all these gutter contractors know what garbage they install, I see this as intentionally criminal. But since the CCB only requires a 1 year warranty and does not require gutter contractors to level gutters, let alone keel then clean, they suffer no liability.

This shows the larger custom No-clog outlets, special industrial size elbows, reducers and the Leaf-catcher in the downspout to strain out the debris that settles in the gutters and is washed down in a heavy downpour.

The cost for this set of copper gutters was $5,974.18 parts and labor.

Here is classic looking finial which is 7' tall that the client bought at an auction. I noticed that it was falling apart and suffering rust stains from inside. I tested it with a magnet and found that even though it was covered with a thin layer of copper, it had a steel frame inside. The seams were soldered together, but many of them had split open. It was a bit top heavy with the large orb under the spire was just hollow copper and would dent easily.

I don't know how old this is, but I also discovered the green tarnish was just a fake paint over the copper after spending a couple hours working to remove it down to the clean copper surface, so the whole finial will tarnish together.

I suggested to the client that I could replace the pillar with a one piece unit that has only one seam. He agreed it would be a good idea. after getting it to my shop it literally took me less than 2 minutes to carefully strip off the copper from the 8 sided spire.

After I removed all the steel out of this finial there was only this lower shell sections left that had very little strength. I suggested building a wider base that was 2' x 2' with a high quality marine grade hardwood plywood, instead of the 13.5" wide base it had with a hollow steel 1.25" tall box inside. I also recommended filling the orb with cement to help give it a lower base weight and strengthen them from dents. The new wider base seen here is now 70# even without the 1.5" copper pole, which is heavier than the original weight.

The final weight was 218.5# in all. I only wish I had anticipated the weak spot just under the large sphere, where the copper pipe is the only thing supporting everything above that point. It has more flex than I was comfortable with. I could not have used a larger pipe. As it was I had to enlarge the hole to accommodate this larger pipe, but I could have added a 1.5" diameter hardwood dowel inside the lower section of this pipe to help support it better. Just before delivery I spent another hour adding solder to this junction to help strengthen it as much as possible. This is the nicest phallic symbol I have seen, let alone worked on personally.

The cost for all this was only $765

For what all I put into this I should have charged at least double, but this was a very interesting and educational project.

These window wells were set so low that Mr. Lesh had made a border of blocks above the window wells for his landscaping around them. But top edge of the wells were still not tall enough, so he asked me for options to build this up a few inches higher with a copper sheet metal.

I suggested that we angle cut some cedar 2x4s to set on their side for use as a solid base inside the copper sheet metal that I will form over the cedar boards for the set of 3 window well borders. Here is the results. He was very pleased and said they look better than he had imagined.

I quoted this project at $787.50

$10,626.68 total for all 4 projects

(a) Gutter Installation
(b) Gutter Debris Protection Options
(c) Roofing Quality Standards
(d) Chimney Flashing
(e) Moss Control & Treatment

web pages for answers and solutions that could save you thousands of $ and a great deal of anguish.

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