SHED BUILDING VIDEO 13 OF 15
How to Install 3-Tab Asphalt Shingles on a Shed
Learn how to install 3-tab asphalt shingles on your shed with our step-by-step video and guide. Perfect for DIYers seeking professional results.
Taught by Henry Reinders, a professional builder, renovator and woodworker with more than 45 years of hands-on experience.
Popular Video Chapters
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0:10 Inspect bundles and prepare the roof
Inspect the shingle bundles, organize the roof work and confirm that the sheathing is clean and ready.
6:39 Lay out balanced starter strips
Lay out balanced starter strips so the lower shingle edge is supported and the pattern begins square.
10:28 Install roofing felt and edge protection
Henry shows the underlayment and roof-edge preparation used in this project before shingles are installed.
16:08 Place and fasten the first shingle course
Position the first shingle course with a consistent overhang and fasten it in the approved nailing zone.
21:07 Work safely while stepping the courses
Use a stepped installation pattern to reduce ladder movement while maintaining safe roof-work practices.
27:33 Cut and reuse shingle sections efficiently
Cut and reuse suitable shingle sections so offsets remain correct and material waste is reduced.
33:31 Complete the upper courses on both sides
Complete the upper courses on both roof slopes while keeping tabs and exposure lines consistent.
38:14 Cut and install the ridge caps
Henry explains how to cut ridge caps and install them with the prevailing wind direction in mind.
WANT TO BUILD THIS SHED?
Complete Plans When You’re Ready
Use the video tutorials to help build the shed. Use the plans for exact dimensions, drawings, material lists, construction sequence and the included Excel costing sheet.
Asphalt-Shingle Installation Quick Reference
Shingle installation has a handful of details — felt weight, starter strip, ridge direction — that decide how well the roof sheds water for years, not just how it looks on day one.
Key specs at a glance
- Starter strip: supports and seals the first run of shingles
- Underlayment shown: Henry recommends 30-pound felt for this project; use an underlayment approved for your roof material and local codes (if applicable)
- Pattern: stepped installation to work sections with less ladder movement – see video
- Ridge caps: installed opposite the prevailing wind direction
- First course overhang: about 1 inch
Common mistakes to avoid
- Skipping the starter strip or not offsetting it properly – possible leaks
- Installing ridge caps facing into the prevailing wind
- Working straight across instead of stepping, adding extra ladder movement
- Getting the first-course overhang too far in either direction
PROJECT RESOURCES
Need a Budget? Price the Project Before You Build
Download the free Excel costing sheet to enter current local prices, provided for both shed plan sizes and both old and recent Excel formats (just in case you need the older file format).
Frequently Asked Questions
Questions are based on the topics covered in this video and common questions Henry receives from customers via email.
Why use a starter strip under the first shingle course?
It supports and seals the lower shingle edge and is offset so water does not leak through the underlying layer. A purpose-made strip with a tar seal provides better wind adhesion too. Watch at 6:39
What roofing felt is recommended for a small shed?
We recommend 30-pound felt because it is stronger and easier to work with than thinner 15-pound felt. Watch at 10:28
Why use a stepped shingle pattern?
It lets one person work in sections installing several runs before moving to the next section while reducing ladder movement on the first runs near the eave. Watch at 21:07
Which direction should ridge caps run?
Install them opposite the prevailing wind direction to reduce the chance of wind-driven rain entering the overlaps. Watch at 38:14
How much should the first shingle course overhang the roof edge?
The video uses approximately a 1-inch overhang for the primary shingle course while keeping the starter strip positioned to support and seal that edge. Watch at 16:08
Complete Video Transcript
Use the expandable transcript to read Henry’s instructions found in this video – with timestamps linked to each section in the video.
Open the complete video transcript
Welcome to CountryLifeProjects.com. I’m Henry Rinders. This is video 13 of 15 videos in our shed project. In this video, I’m going to be showing you how to install a three tab ashalt shingle roof. It’s fairly straightforward. You just have to follow the steps in the videos and I’m sure you won’t have a problem. Okay, we’re going to be getting started with our roof. Before we get going here, I just want to show you what shingle we’re using. This is just a typical three tab shingle. They are generally 36 in long, 12 in deep, and our tabs are 12 in each, so 6 in on center or 12 in between. Um,
when you’re picking this material out and you’re at the lumber yard or your roofing supplier, paper packaging tends to show damage quite uh quite easily. Plastic wrap because it tends to loosen up. It’s very hard to see damage. So, I recommend when you’re picking out your material that you just run your hand around the perimeter of the packages. Just make sure you don’t feel any dings or dents. uh strapping from when these are bundled up and everything can leave uh marks in your shingles which renders them useless. So, take a little bit of time when you’re picking them out. Like I say, paper wrap tends to show a little bit better, but again, check those as well. And
as far as our roof goes, we’ve already done the first half of our roof. There’s a reason for it. I want to show you a couple things. If you look up here, you’ll see that I have screwed a 1- in trim board on here, which is our overhang. We’re going to use that for measuring and trimming if we have to. By doing that, you will notice on this side here how nice of an overhang you get. It’s perfectly straight. We have a 1-in overhang on our side, our eve, and it is equal. So, when you look at it from this angle, it looks very good. So, next I want to bring you up onto
the roof. I’m going to show you a couple things we did purposely that you need to watch for. On this side here, I’m going to show you what we did with our starter strip, which is kind of a normal way to do it, but it’s not the best way. This strip under here, which we put on first, is a full tile reversed. And as you can see, I can actually lift this shingle, this shingle edge here. The way we’re going to do it on the other side so that you can see the difference is we’re going to go with a strip of tile cut from our shingles that has the tar strip here,
which will allow this first row of shingles to adhere and prevent blow up in the future. Makes it stronger. You can also go this way with that strip, but we’ll show you that on the other side when we get there. The other thing on here, and I’ll show you on the other side, you’ll notice we don’t have a 6 in and a 12 in start. We’ve actually had to balance it out on both ends. That’s really important. Again, I’ll show you how to lay that out on the other side. And on the roof, we have the shingle wrapped over. I’m going to show you as we get closer to the ridge,
uh, why we’re doing that. And, uh, so let’s get started on the other side. Okay, we’re up on the side of the roof where we’re going to be doing the uh roofing and finishing this side off. Before we get rolling here, I just want to start with the roofing felt that we’ve used. It’s already on. We’ve actually cut it just a little bit back from the edge of our fascia. So, 8 in to a/4 inch roughly. That doesn’t have to be perfect. You just don’t want it overhanging. Kind of looks rough. on your roof. If it gets wet, it may bubble a little bit like that, but it’s better than
15lb felt, which if this got wet, and it was 15 lb, it would look terrible and it’s very hard to work with. You can also get roofing felts that are made from fiberglass and other materials that are resistant to water and they won’t do that at all. A little bit more money, but uh for a shed and for most houses really, number 30 felt is fine. It’s a very thick material. Once you have that on, and I I recommend that you use plenty of staples. You don’t want this moving. You know, you will be standing on it at various times. So, make sure you use enough staples. We’ve used 38 on here. That’s
about what you want when you staple onto the lap here or where there’s double layers. Quarter inch just won’t cut it. So once you get that on, the next step will be to lay out your shingles. Now, in a lot of videos or instructional manuals, you know, right off the bat, they talk about you start off with a 12 in right flush with the uh overhang where you want it and then you go 6 in in on the next one. You know, if you are laying out your roof in this particular case, if we were to do that at that end there, we have a 1/2 inch left over. So there’s no way you can actually secure a small
strip at the end there. So in this situation, you want to find a balance between the two so you have an equal amount on both ends. So I’ve nailed this strip on here temporarily. And if you’re working on your own, this is really handy cuz you can move the shingles back and forth while you’re adjusting and trying to find out what that uh what the measurement is going to be. So in here, what I’ve done is I’ve moved this till I have 3 and 38 of an inch on the other end. And then with this tile here centered on the lower tab here, we have the exact same amount here. Keeping in mind that
this strip here is the actual end of our shingle. That’s our 1-in overlap there. So take your time and get this laid out. Try and get an equal amount on either end. Uh if you have say three inches here and four and 3/4 down there, that’s okay. But just make sure that the other side’s the same way when you do it. So that done, we’re going to take this off and then we’re going to start showing you how to lay out your starter course. One more thing though. Once you have this figured out, going to move this one out of the way. Once you have this figured out and you have your first shingle in
place here, before you move it, mark off a line at the end here as your starting point. We’re going to use that later for our layout. A couple more things before we actually get started with our layout. Uh quite often there’s a lot of talk and controversy over this plastic strip that you see on the back of shingles. A lot of people think you have to remove that. Absolutely not. In fact, on a lot of shingles, you’ll actually see a label on here that says do not remove. This is strictly to keep your shingles, if you can imagine this all in a bundle, from sticking together. So from this tar
layer sticking to there. Never get them apart if that wasn’t there. And when you lay the shingles, you’ll notice that this doesn’t even interfere or come in contact with any of our shingle layers here. In fact, that is where your nails are going to be going through. So, you lay this down at your 5- in exposure right here. You can see that it’s up here at the top of this shingle here. And this here has full contact with our tar layer. So, do not take that off. If anything, it just adds a little bit of reinforcement underneath where your nail goes through. How much? I can’t say, but uh that’s said to add some strength to it. And one other thing, this is a 30° angle roof. It’s a 712
pitch. And as we get going on this this video, safety should be number one concern. Uh we’re going to get about three or four rows up. I’ll mention some of the uh safety equipment that you can buy for that. Also, if you go to our website at CountryLifeProjects.com under uh resources, we have a section on roof safety, the equipment you can buy, some of the things you should be looking out for, and videos that you can watch that address safety issues on the roof. Also, clothing. If you have an old pair of work pants, I definitely recommend using those. You start getting up here and sitting on this, it’s going to get dirty. As far as shoes go, don’t wear hard sold shoes. It can rub against
here when you’re standing on the shingle. It can rub on it and it will remove some of the uh ashalt on the face of it. So soft shoes is important. And generally a 712 pitch is a lot steeper than you think. If you’re standing up here, it’s very easy to lose your balance, especially if you’re not used to it. So definitely visit our website and read read the safety information we have. Check out some of the equipment and some of the videos. It’s definitely worthwhile. Before we start our layout, we have to determine what the width of our starter strips going to be. We’ll be cutting those ourselves. So, it’s fairly simple. Just take
a look at this shingle I got laid out here. You’ll see we got our tar strip here. This is what we want near the bottom of our first run and at the edge of our facasia board. This line here, which has little notches here at the end where this line comes through, we’re going to be cutting this first strip right here. So to do that, just flip the uh shingle over. Like I say, we got these notches on the ends here. Plus, we can use these two here. Just place a straight edge on there. Take your time to make sure these are accurate. And just score the back. Like I say, take your time. You don’t need too many of these. And you just flip it over.
pieces will just drop off. We need four of these in a bit. So, I’m going to make those. And the measurement for those here, 7 in is what this one works out to. So, when we get up on the roof, I’ll show you how we do that. And I’ll finish that up and then we can get going. We’re going to lay out our starter rows and then our spacing. Uh the first starter row here for our starter strip, we have a 7in starter strip. We want it to hang over half inch to 3/4 of an inch. In total, we’re going to have 1 in overhang with our primary layer of shingles, but we don’t want
the starter strip the same because we’re cutting it ourselves. Could be some variations in the width. And if we were to try and make it the same, we would probably get not get a nice line here. The nice line we’re going to get with the main shingles is through a chalk line. And so the first thing we’re going to do is we want a 1-in overhang. Our shingles are 12 in. So we’re going to make our first mark at 11. Mark that off. And then our starter row are 7 in. And I’m going to give them 5/8. As long as you’re between/ an inch and 3/4, you’re fine. We mark that. And then from
this line here, we’re going to go up as much as high as we can reach from our ladders. We’re going to go up every 5 in, which is what our exposure is going to be on our shingles. And then we can add more lines as we go up. I highly recommend that you chalk all these lines. We’re going to repeat these measurements on the other end. And we’re going to snap our lines. And that’s going to give us nice straight lines with our shingles all the way across the roof. With three tab shingles, you also want to make sure you’re centering and you have lines, vertical lines this way to keep
your shingles in line this way. Now, in the prior segment, I pointed out that I had marked off where our shingles going to start. So from here, I’m going to go back a couple lines 6 in. I’m going to go 6 in this way. 6 in is the center of each tab on your shingles. So I’ll do that now. And we’ll do the same thing on this side of this line. Right over to our last shingle. Put a good mark on there. Makes them easier to see. Now, we’re going to repeat these lines up at the peak or the ridge of the roof. And we’re going to use those all the way through the whole
installation. Why I’m doing so many here is that we’re going to start at the bottom here. We’re going to step back with our shingles so that we can work in one area and move our ladder and then do several rows in one shot. So, we’re going to do that. We’re going to mark our lines down there and we’re going to snap these lines. It’s uh it’s fairly difficult to do on your own. So, if you do have somebody that can help you, by all means, get their help. And uh we’ll come back shortly once these are all marked off and start laying our shingles on so that you can see how this will all start to work together.
Okay, we have all our lines marked out that we need to get started here. Our vertical lines go all the way to the ridge. The uh horizontal lines, we’ve gone as far as we can reach. Uh I’ve nailed a block in here to hold my material. Make sure you use a couple screws, otherwise it can flip out on you. We’re going to start with our starter strip, which we pre-cut. We have a 1/2 in overlap approximately. And you’re nailing these, you want to stay up about 2 and 1/2, 3 in and about the same end. Double check you’re lined up. We’re flush with the outside of our spacer bar. You can see our lines here. We’re going to have our open groove and our shingles between the
tabs on those lines. So, when you’re nailing, make sure your nails aren’t in those spots. Now, you’ll notice this is our starting shingle line here. You’ll see that I have this strip 5 in back. Minimum is 4 in. So, we’re going to carry through. Well, you can see we got a lot of room. We’re going to carry through to the end there. We have to put a little piece on the end. Nail the next piece in place here. And I just want to mention a couple things about the starter strip. You can use a couple extra nails on this. It doesn’t matter too much. Never gets seen. Now I’m going to grab my starter piece, which I already have pre-cut.
It’s going to go here. You’ll see that it’s extends just a little past our starter strip and is flush with the end here and is on our line here. Now, for a shed, this is fine. And even in some housing situations, you can see that the starter strip is up here about 2 in. If you’re in an area that you experience ice dams or you have really strong winds and rain, you may want to go to an alternate starter strip. And there’s different kinds. There’s actual material for ice dams that will come up about 24 in. And then their starter strips as wide as 17 inches. Uh if you’re concerned about that, check them out. Uh the information on
our resources on our websites, Country Life Media, Countrypro.com has that information. Just check the resources section. And I’m going to finish off this row. Now I’m going to start the second strip. And then I’m going to start show then I’m going to show you the layout procedure so that you can keep working across the roof and do several rows at one time. Okay, before we go along too far here, I just want to point out the type of nail, the size of nail type of nail as well. This is a standard roofing nail. This is 1 and 1/4 in long. it will penetrate the shingle and protrude through the half inch sheathing by about a quarter inch,
which is what you want. Uh you’ll find where you might see instruction where people are talking about using 3/4 in nails. Forget it. It’s not only is it not correct, but when you’re putting your nails on and you’re nailing them, one and a 1/4 inch allows you to be able to hold the nail like that and be able to give it a tap without worrying about banging your fingers. If that was 3/4 of an inch, 7/8 or an inch, that becomes more problematic. Chances are you’re going to have some blue fingers by the time you’re done. So that’s number one. Your nails 1 and a/4 galvanized aluminum or galvanized or aluminum and a big head 3/8 to 7/16 is typical roofing
nail. And when we get to the ridge, we’ll be using longer nails because by that time we’ll have more layers of ashwall shingle to nail through. As far as where to nail, you want to have on the ends here a nail just below the tar line here about an inch in on our grooves here between the tabs right above the the line the opening here. Same here. And then an inch in over here. If you live in a high wind area, you would put a nail one and 12 to 2 in on either side of this line here. That gives it a little bit of extra strength. So, we’re going to go ahead and nail that.
Double check you’re on your chalk line. That is the proper way to nail them. Now, you can also use an air nailer if you have one. However, I personally prefer to do this by hand. Uh you can with an air nailer, you can set them too deep depending on your air pressure. That’s all stuff that would have to be adjusted. Um you can also because the tendency is to work faster, not be as precise as to where the location of your nails go. Also, if your gun’s on an angle or or something along, you know, either way, this way, this way, or this way, and your nail goes in on an angle, that’s not good either because your nails do need
to go in straight and flat. And you don’t want to over nail them. You want to make sure they’re solid, but not over nailed. And if they’re on an angle, they can actually cut into the shingle or cut into the shingle above it. So, nice and flat, not too uh not too deep, but solid. So, I’m going to get the next piece for over here, and then I’m going to show you what we’re going to be doing with our staging here, or stepping back to allow us to work in sections as we go across the roof. It’s very uh helpful when you’re working on your own to be able to do it that way.
As you can see, I’ve got the first of our shingles in to create our step here. And I’ll show you in a minute what that’s about. It’s really easy for measuring. Uh you just simply take your tape. Imagine these shingles aren’t here. You take your tape from your spacer spacer piece there. So you would put it there. You would measure over to your line. You do the same thing on the next one. Measure over and take those measurements. That one there, and right through to that piece there. You just go down, cut them all square. I’ll show you how to do that in a quick little uh video or part of this video. And so that’s one thing that’s ready
to go. Now, one thing I did not show you earlier that I have that I have the opportunity to still show you is we did our starter strip down here and it has our tar bead or tar line underneath here, which is going to allow these shingles to adhere to that. You can also, if you’re concerned about wind on the ends of your shed, you can also put the same type of starter strip here. You’ll notice on the back here that our plastic film is only about a 1/2 inch back. So, when you do it on the ends, you only want to be about 3/8 of an inch over. And when you adhere it on the bottom here,
our starter strip comes up to about here. This piece would overlap by about two to three inches. And you would nail it back about two and a half to three inches as well. And you would run that right through to the uh peak of your roof. And then the top would overlap onto that. So that’s a way to ensure the wind does not pull up on your end shingles here. I’m going to go ahead move my ladder and then I’ll show you how easy it is to do these shingles with a stepped procedure like this. Okay, cutting uh shingles is not hard. It’s uh similar to drywall on in the way that you don’t
have to score it all the way through. Uh good sharp knife is definitely a must. You don’t want the flimsy type of knife that uh you know with the breakoff blades. This is much better to do it. You want a 13-in or 16inch board, whatever you have, as long as it’s wider than your shingle. Just let your shingle stick past the edge a little bit from the top end. and use a triangle square like this. It’s my preference because it’s got a nice beefy edge here. Just make sure it’s flush there. Put it on your mark. And just score through. You’ll kind of get used to how deep or how hard you
have to push. Just snap it. Comes off. And then you have a nice clean line. This will give you a much better finish on the ends of your roof on your overhang. And they’ll be nice and square. And that’s about all there is to it. One other quick note before I actually get started with that. The pieces that you cut off of your starter strip, your starter shingles over here, save them cuz they will be usable on the other end. But let’s get started dropping these into place. You’re going to like this because you can stay in one spot, do three or four rows right away. Just take your next piece. You can just drop it right on top. After this,
you won’t have to worry about spacing for the remainder of the roof. spacing this way. That is. Now, before I put the uh next piece on, at this stage, there are roofing brackets that you can install that you can mount on here that will allow you to put a 2×10 along the length of your roof that you can stand on as you work up your roof. They would be nailed on at this point. Under our resource section on CountryLifeProjects.com under the roofing, we have information on those brackets. So, just take a look under the safety section on roofing. You’ll find them. Um, we’re just going to carry on here. We’ll put the next piece on.
And you would just carry on this way. This block here is actually going to interfere with the next piece. So, I won’t be able to put that on without removing it. So, we can carry on with the ones we have. Okay, as you can see, the step pro process that we have over there carries on here and it will do so on the next three strips. So, we can just carry on through to the end. You get to the point where you have to start cutting them. Remember, you can use the pieces you cut from that end over there. And then we just repeat this process. We’ll chalk more lines and we’ll carry on and we’ll it’ll work its
way up the roof. It’s uh a very easy way to do it. You get a lot done in an area at one time. Okay, we’ve got to the end of our first rows here. And on the other end there, we cut our pieces to size to get our start. On this end, we just have our pieces that we have to fill in. It’s very easy to do when you use the step procedure. You can measure a number of pieces at one time. You just simply measure from our spacer board we have on the end here, which is our 1 inch overhang. Take your measurement. We got three and a quarter, 9 and a quarter. If you had more rows, you could
carry on and take those measurements. Go ahead and cut them like I showed you earlier. You’ll notice that on this end here, with the procedure we used for finding where the shingles have to go, that this piece on the end here is the same width as the small pieces on the end there. When you put small pieces on the end like this, it’s a good idea uh to put a nail not only at the bottom here. I put one up here as well. Reason for that, this is a small piece. You don’t want it to can lever out over your edge here later on in the future. So that’s all you have to do there. Let’s put our next piece on here. So,
that completes these rows. From here on up, I actually prefer to be above my work going up. That way, I’m not standing on my shingles. So, we’re going to finish the remainder of this. We’re going to get up to the ridge. We get up there. I’ll show you how we lap it over and then how we do our ridge caps. As far as the rest of this goes, just follow the procedure all the way up. Repeat your stepping process at that end. Work your way over. fill in here. It’s pretty straightforward uh from uh this point forward. Okay, we are now at the ridge of our roof and I want to show you how I did that. On this side here,
we came up, over overlapped it, comes down about 3 in. We’re doing the same thing coming up this side here. We’re going to overlap it this way. By the time we have our ridge caps on here, that gives us three levels of protection. And to do that, because we don’t have a chalk line here anymore, you just line this one up with the first one. And at the top of the groove here is where you place your shingle. And that’s a 5 in exposure. And just nail this on first, the same way you would nail shingles normally. Once you have that nailed, bend this over nice and snug and nail this side down.
You don’t have to worry too much about where your nails are. Bridge cap covers everything. Remember to keep this nice and snug. You don’t want your ridge caps peeking too much. At this point, inch and a quarter nails is still fine. When we do our ridge cap, we’re going to use 1 and 1/2 in nails to compensate for the extra material that’s on here. We’re going to finish up to the end and get that done. Next, I’m going to show you how to do the ridge caps. They’re really simple. And uh then we’ll come back up and we’ll start putting the ridge caps on. Next, I’m going to show you how to cut your ridge caps. Uh this is where
you can use up any of the pieces you have left over. What you want to do on this point here and here on the end of your shingle here is take a straight edge, triangle square works good, and just cut these pieces off. I’m going to show you why we’re doing this in a second. You don’t have to be too precise with your angles as long as you’re go back on an angle. Just make up as many as you need for the roof. Now, why we cut these back when these are laying on your ridge and you’re putting them together like that. If you still had this here, it would show up
on the edge here and it gives a very gives you a very unsightly line along the ridge of your roof. This way, you never see it. You get a very nice clean finish. You also need to cut one strip 5 in like that. That’s going to be the piece you’re going to use to finish the ridge cap at the other end. That’s all there is to it. Cut as many as you need. Use up all your leftover pieces if you can, and we’ll get started with the ridge cap next. Okay, we’ve got all our ridge caps cut and stacked up here. Uh, this handy little jig that they’re sitting on is really simple to build. Just a 2×4
down here. Chunk of plywood and a 2 by six here. Keeps them all nicely stacked, which is important, too, because if they’re kind of like that in different places, they’ll start sticking together. If you keep them stacked, so this plastic strip is on top of the car strip, they won’t stick together. But, so to get going here, I’m going to show you how you figure this out. What you’re wanting to do is get your cap with an equal amount of space on either side. So that so this exposure here is the same on both sides. Once you have that figured out, then what you need to do is snap a line down one side.
Once you have that done, then you’re pretty much ready to go. Now, one advantage of having this double layer folded over here is you get a bit of a rounded top here, which makes it nice for putting your ridge cap on. So, same way that we do our shingles, you nail behind or just below the tar line here. And in this case, we’re using 1 and 1/2 in galvanized roofing nails. You line it up to the line and to the outside edge here. Lay it flat. Do the one side and then pull it over nice and tight and nail the other side. Now the exposure on these is exactly the same as the
roof. So simple way to do that. You no longer have any notches or grooves to give you that exposure. So instead of measuring each one, just cut a little stick and then you can just space them that way. Line it up to the line and nail the next one. I would recommend keeping them about an inch and a half up to make sure you’re nailing into the uh shingle below. Get it nicely nice and tight. Pull it over. Make sure it looks square and then nail the other side. Now, before I continue on here, you’ll see that I’m laying them this way. So, the gap is here. There’s a reason for that. Our wind comes from the opposite direction. So,
if it’s raining and the rain is coming this way, then it’s going to go across the top of our caps, not into them. If these were the reverse, the rain would be going inside and being forced in here. So, these should be laid opposite to which way the wind and the rain generally hits your roof. Going to carry on here. I’m going to keep doing these exactly the same way. 5 in exposure for these particular shingles. And the chalk line is an absolute must. It’ll give you a perfectly straight ridge cap line all the way down your roof. Makes it look very nice. Now, don’t worry too much if these are just sitting up a tiny bit like that.
Even on your roof, as these get hot, they will lay flat and they will stick together. I’m going to complete the remainder of the ridge. When I get to the end, I’m going to show you how to do the uh end because there’s a a little bit of a technique there. Nothing uh nothing fancy, but it’s good to know. So, I’ll finish this now and we’ll get to that shortly. Okay, we’ve gotten to the end here. In a second, I’m going to show you how to finish that off. Right now, I just want to show you that if you snap a line and you follow all the way down, you get a perfectly straight ridge. As you can see, the other thing, too,
if these are all put in properly, if you tap on the top, should be nice and solid. Shouldn’t be any hollowess there. You’ll see these are a little bit loose right now. Again, those will melt and or the tar strip underneath will melt and they will bond together. So, next, uh let’s go over here and I’ll show you how to finish off the end. Okay, we’re at the end of the roof and we’re going to be putting on our last uh ridge caps here. Uh there’s two ways to do this. Uh this is one way where you cut a piece with your exposure. You cut this piece to length. You wrap it over,
nail it like you would the other ones, and then finish off on the end here with a piece that gives you a 5 in exposure as well and is flush with the end here. And then this piece, you would nail it here and here. Can’t go too far because we got our inch overhang. Then you would tar over top of those nails just to hide them and to uh weatherproof them. The other way you can do this is you can reverse this last piece like that. Now you’ll notice that we have two tar strips now. And you can put this piece and try and balance it out for your exposure. You can put this piece on like this. And you
can put a nail here and a nail there. And do the same thing on this side. That gives you double strips to adhere this as it as the sun heats it up. So either way is fine. I prefer doing it this way, but you can do it either way you want. So, I’m going to finish that off. Line it up. I already cut this piece to length so I know it fits. When you’re bending these over too, if they’re tight on both sides, it’s usually a good indicator that you’re positioned right. It’s also then you know it’s nice and tight. No hollow spots. So, we take our last piece, line it up, make sure it’s flush
before you put the second nail in. Just get it lined up on this side. and just dab a little bit of black tar on there. If you have a colored roof, brown or green or whatever color, you should be able to get a suitable sealant that’s color matched or close to the same color. If you just have dark gray or black shingles, tar will do just fine. That’s is that’s all there is to it. We are done with the roof, but I do want to go over a few things. Uh recap, so to speak, excuse the pun. Okay, we finished our roof caps. One thing I didn’t uh didn’t show you is on the end here. Uh the second cap is a little
higher because it’s sitting on the first cap. You can, if you like, put a starter strip in here, the width of your exposure, and that will lift this up just a bit and give this last or the first cap the same appearance underneath as the remainder of your caps. So, if you want to do that, go ahead. I just want to do a recap on the roof, the whole roof process in general just quickly. Um, number one is when you’re starting with your roofing felt, go with 30 lb. Don’t go with 15. It’s too light. 30 lb when you put it on, try and get get your shingles on top and finished before the
felt gets wet. If the felt gets wet, it can start to get wavy and that can in some cases transpire through your shingles or cause your shingles to have the same effect. Uh if you live in an area where you may have to work when it is raining or a little bit drizzly, then there’s other materials that you can buy for underllayment that uh won’t do that. Uh fiberglassbased uh plastic based well sort of plastic uh new compounds these days. So keep that in mind when you do your felt or your underllayment. And then when you start your shingles and you’re doing your roofing, uh it’s really important that you don’t do it in too hot a weather. Shingles get very pliable when they get
really hot. They tear easy. Uh they’re messier. They’re harder to cut. They’re also, if you’re working on the roof and it’s hot, the surface of your shingles can damage much easier if you’re stepping on them. So cooler weather is better. The same applies if you’re working in really cold weather. Uh you could uh the shingles get brittle, so they crack easy. So cold weather can be problematic as well. So early morning, starting early morning and then uh going later in the day, starting later in the day again if it’s really hot, probably isn’t a bad idea. Um the other thing uh you’ll notice when I was chalking out the lines that I did my vertical lines. The vertical lines
when you’re using three tab shingles is really important because you want all your lines on your shingles lining up when you look up the roof. So by doing those vertical lines, we achieve that. Horizontal lines assure that our roof is straight. When you’re looking down at this way, you’ll notice that I marked off several vertical lines. Uh you can do it that way. I prefer to do it that way. I find it more accurate. But you can also once you have your first two lines, just measure 6 in with these particular shingles because they’re 12 in on center. And so you don’t have to mark them all. But that’s up to you. You’ll also note if you’re working with these
type of shingles, the three tab shingles, and you’re lucky enough that you can start with a full shingle and then cut off half a shingle and work across your roof that way. If you can do that, uh you take a look at the back of the uh shingle in this next picture. You’ll see I’ve pointed out that there’s some premarked measurements that are dead center of each shingle. And the uh GAF product we’re using has those. Uh you may find it’s probably pretty common with other products that they’ll have the same thing. And that makes it very easy uh for cutting and uh setting up your uh your runs. So that’s another thing to to take a look at. Other than that,
I’m just going to take the camera underneath and show you that by using our spacing strip here, which was 1 in, that we ended up with a very nice, clean roof line. and just take a look at that. Now, other than that, we are done with the roof. Next thing we’ll be doing is the uh door video, how to install the door. And following that, we’ll be doing the trim video.
Continue the Shed-Building Series
Follow the lessons in sequence so each completed stage is ready for the work that follows.