A standing seam metal roofing system from Drexel Metals turned out to be precisely what a California architect wanted as he sought to design a showcase home that combined an Old World European feel and a modern flair.
Ben Miller, owner of Miller Design in Modesto, CA set out to build this Denair, CA home with one goal in mind: timelessness.
“The main goal was to combine the Old World European look and the modern look,” Miller says. “Metal does that. It’s got a clean modern look, but it’s been around forever.”
Residential projects are the focus of Miller Design. Miller says many of his projects include hidden roofing space, where he uses membrane roofing. For roofing that is visible, metal is his favorite choice. “We were considering metal or slate for this home, but decided to go with metal,” he says. “It was a better fit for this project because it bridges the old and modern looks. We wanted to use products that weren’t dated. We didn’t want people to look at something and say, ‘Oh, that was from that time period.’ We were really after a timeless feel.”
Phil Starr at Starr-Light Metal Designs of Elk Grove, CA, manufactured more than 8,500 square feet of 1-1/2-inch standing seam roofing panels (Drexel Metals’ DM 550 profile), with striations, in Classic Bronze, a low-gloss PVDF finish. Starr is a DM-ARM Authorized Fabricator for Drexel Metals. He formed all of the roofing panels on the jobsite, in two days.
Miller says the Classic Bronze closely matches metal employed in products on other parts of the home: windows, gutters, awnings. “We were after similar color and feel,” he says. “We wanted to keep the material palette as simple as possible.”
From a roofer’s standpoint, this was the kind of install that makes it enjoyable to get to the jobsite. “It was a dream job,” says Ray Schulze of Custom Roof Crafters in Valley Springs, CA. “It’s a unique house in a lot of ways, but for us, it has zero penetrations, zero valleys. It’s a pretty straight-forward job, but it’s a great project, a unique home.”
Schulze installed the underlayment during the summer months. Once other contractors installed stucco and limestone walls, Custom Roof Crafters returned to install the metal roofing.
“Safety was a big part of the job, most of the roof was a 10:12 slope,” Schultze says, noting all proper safety procedures were carried out during the install. “As far as the metal goes, it was an easy install. Some of the panels were 16-footers, some 13-footers. The longest panels were over the garage area and they were 23-footers.”
In addition to the 85 squares of metal, Custom Roof Crafters installed another 50 squares of flat roofing over one section of the house, the so-called “hidden” roofing.
Schulze says his operation was “just another asphalt shingle installer” until about 10 years ago. “That’s when the economy started to go bad and everyone was slinging shingles,” he says. “There was too much competition for the available work. So I got more into metal and created a niche for the business. There still aren’t too many people around here doing metal.”