In March of 2007, Oscar from ODR Roofing in San Jose started the roof tile work. Here, the tiles are stacked in preparation for laying them out, and ridge blocking is put in place in order to hold the ridge tiles.
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Here is Oscar and one of our framing guys in the back. Oscar was really friendly and prompt, and his work was of the highest quality. We were definitely sold after we saw another one of his roofing jobs on a house in San Jose. Lora said she never saw a crew work so fast. She said, "His guys didn’t work fast, they literally ran around the roof." Before they placed the tiles, they laid a "torch down" granulated cap sheet to water proof the entire roof and the roof decks. This membrane is so heavy duty, that with no tile over it, it alone would make a good roof covering for 20 years. In addition, they also put down a lot of copper and lead flashing around the skylights, valleys and vents.
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A close up of the beautiful bird-embossed detail blocking beneath the "S tile" in order to seal it off. Once laid, the tiles are grouted in. You can actually really notice this particular detail when walking along the lane by the great room, since the road level comes to even with the main deck at that point.
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The tile almost complete, with only the ridge pieces needing to be laid. Our tile was from U.S. Tile and the color we used is called "El Camino blend." It’s a manufactured 100% clay tile designed to have a natural variation. We preferred the look of the variegated color rather than the monochromatic tile (which is less expensive than the blend). The blend color gives an "old world" look to the roof without having to have the fragility (and incredible expense) of real old world tiles. Genuine hand-crafted tiles are very much in vogue for building these days, so much so that people will go to enormous lengths to ship in the old tiles from Mexico and Central America. An acquaintance of ours is constructing a roof using these tiles, and both Chris and I were surprised to learn how fragile they actually were. Even though it’s not necesary for the tiles to be strong because they aren’t structural, it is not an appealing thought to imagine getting on this roof to repair broken tiles.
While Oscar did the roof work, Chris completed installation of the windows and other exterior preparations necessary in order for the stucco to begin.
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A close up of a section of the roof after the ridge tiles are in place. The skylight openings are covered up until after the roof is in and the prismatic skylights can be put in place.
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Phase one of the roof complete. The area left incomplete by ODR roofing could be finished in one working day, but was intentionally left uncovered so that the stucco work could be completed without damage to the tiles. All this work took about a week to do. Next stop, stucco.
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