Historic Roof Replacement in Montrose

Plan on four to eight weeks before the permit application is even accepted, and more if the first submission has to go back. The way to keep it at the short end is to document what is there properly -- photographs of the existing profile, eaves and ridge -- and to propose something that reads as the original rather than arguing for something that does not.

The Secretary of the Interior's Standards for Rehabilitation, applied to roof form and cladding. In practice the question is whether the finished roof reads as the original: same profile, compatible color and texture, and details like exposed rafter tails and open eaves left alone rather than modernized.

It is a real rule and it is not California's. Several states apply a 25% threshold, above which a repaired roof has to be brought up to current code. California uses 50%: replace more than half the total roof area within any one-year period and the whole roof has to comply. If you have read about the 25% rule, that is why it does not match what a Glendale contractor tells you.

If the property is identified as historic, yes -- roof form and roof cladding are explicitly within scope. The part that catches people out is the order: a Design Review Exemption has to be approved BEFORE a building permit application will be accepted, not at the same time. Check your own address with the City of Glendale before anyone specifies a covering.

Not automatically. Age is a prompt to look, not a verdict. Composition at twenty years is usually near the end; clay tile at twenty years has decades left in the tile even if the felt underneath is finished. That distinction is most of the roofing decisions made in this city, and it is settled by a survey rather than by the calendar.