A 2025 project on the Indian River side of Vero Beach. The home is a new-construction coastal modern — clean lines, broad overhangs, generous porch spaces. The architectural language wanted slate from the elevation drawings forward. The construction budget did not.
We installed a heavyweight designer asphalt — CertainTeed Grand Manor in Stonegate Gray — and detailed it as carefully as we would have detailed slate.
Why this was the right call
The structure was framed for an asphalt-grade dead load. Upgrading to slate would have required substantial structural retrofit. The build cost of that retrofit alone exceeded the upgrade cost of the slate itself; the math did not work.
The honest answer was: do not pretend the project is something it is not, and do the asphalt exceptionally well.
The detailing
We installed the Grand Manor with all the small detail upgrades we would normally specify on slate:
- Hip and ridge: copper, matching the gutters and downspouts
- Underlayment: Polyglass Polystick TU Plus, fully adhered over the entire deck
- Eave detail: copper drip edge, hand-finished
- Valley: copper W-valley, cleated
- Flashings: copper at every penetration
- Ridge ventilation: continuous, integrated under the cap line
The shingle is the most visible element. Everything around the shingle is detailed at the level of the more expensive material.
Cost comparison
Approximate project cost: $135,000 for 4,200 square feet of roof.
The slate equivalent would have run roughly $310,000, plus another $40,000-$60,000 in structural retrofit.
The owner saved approximately $215,000 by accepting the right material for the budget rather than forcing the budget to the architect's preferred material.
What this reads as from the street
From thirty feet, the roof reads as a heavyweight slate-style covering on a coastal modern home with copper accents. From the porch, it reads as a heavyweight designer shingle. From the roof, it reads as Grand Manor.
The owner is at peace with this. The architect, after the fact, observed that the copper detailing carried more weight in the final composition than they had expected — the metal accents read as the gravitas element, with the field as background.
Timeline
10 weeks from contract to handover. Six weeks of that was install; the rest was permitting and inspection.
What we are most proud of
The roof is, on its terms, exceptional. It is not pretending to be something else. It is what it is, executed at the level of care the home deserved. That is the project the budget allowed; that is the project we built.
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