West Roofing

The estimate from West Roofing was $1,200 less than the lowest of four estimates that we had previously solicited, from other roofers.  After hearing about our other four estimates, our realtor recommended West Roofing, based on work that West Roofing had done for other of her clients.  The owner of West Roofing is George Halusek.  He worked alone or with a helper--depending on circumstances.  He related that he has been doing roofing for many years (with his father, when he was younger).  His roofing license is on record with the State of Illinois.  Conversations with George about the work were quite understandable and informative.  Our previous roofing job was 17 years ago, which was a tear-off of three layers (the bottom of which was cedar shingles) and an application of plywood sheeting on the house roof.  George reported that flashing wasn't replaced properly during that job, which he indicated was responsible for the water leak that we had at the chimney.  We were quite satisfied with the work that was done by West Roofing.  We had to call George back, to add a few feet of ridge shingles on a small porch roof.  He had somehow overlooked that, but he returned expeditiously and added the missing shingles.  Debris was removed each day.  Cleanup was quite satisfactory at ground level, but George and his helper missed cleaning up the debris that had accumulated in the gutters.  He probably would have been glad to do that (e.g. when he came back to add the missing ridge shingles), but by then I had already cleaned the gutters myself (that's when I noticed the missing ridge shingles).  Unlike the other roofers that we had contacted, George did not locate a dumpster in our driveway for debris collection.  While it was nice to have debris cleaned up each day--and not have a dumpster in the driveway--it meant that George was motivated to reach the disposal site each day--in order to unload the debris from his truck.  This aspect of his work we learned about when he was about to leave at the end of the job (he said that he hoped to make it to the disposal site before it closed for the day).

In his proposal George wrote that he would "pull all permits".  We failed to ask if he had done so; none was on display during the job.