Glen Rock Roofing, Chimney, Siding and Masonry Contractors

Four Roof Eras on One Street

A roof fails in the way its era built it. In Glen Rock that means naming the decade before naming the problem.

On the pre-1894 sandstone houses the roof has been replaced several times over stonework that never moved. The failures show up where new meets old.

The borough’s northeast blocks around Prospect Street and Prospect Park hold Colonial Revival and Arts and Crafts houses from 1890 to 1915. They fail at the valleys and at the hand-formed junctions.

The 1920s tile roofs fail differently. A cracked or slipped tile is easy to see; the stain it puts on the stucco wall below is what people call about.

The 1950s asphalt roofs have been re-covered more than once by now, and the failure is often the accumulated layers as much as the shingles themselves.

What You Can See From the Sidewalk

You do not need to go up there to know something is wrong. Most of the early signs are visible from the ground with a phone camera.

• Dark streaking down a stucco wall under a tile valley

• Tiles that sit at a different angle than their neighbors

• Shingle edges curling or lifting along a 1950s ridge line

• White powder or crumbling mortar on a chimney’s top few courses

Take the photograph from the same spot twice, a month apart. A stain that grows is active; a stain that stops was a one-off.

Send them to us and we will tell you whether it needs a visit this month or a look next spring.

Sandstone Stacks and Everything Built Around Them

On almost every house here the chimney predates the current roof by decades. It was built once and has been worked around ever since.

That matters because each reroof left flashing behind. Peel back three coverings and you often find three attempts at the same joint, none of them removed.

The four sandstone farmhouses carry stone chimneys with no liner in the original build, and what is in them now was added later by somebody else.

The 1920s and 1930s stacks were built for a different appliance than the one connected to them now. A modern gas appliance vents cooler and wetter than old masonry expects.

Crowns, Chases and Full Stack Rebuilds

The crown is the concrete cap on top. It is the cheapest part to fix and the most common thing we find failed.

Once the crown cracks, water runs down inside the brick rather than off it, and the freeze cycle does the rest over two or three winters.

A chase cover is the metal version on a framed chase. Rust at the low corner is the tell, and a stained ceiling below is the confirmation.

When the top courses have moved, we take the stack down to sound masonry and rebuild from there rather than repointing something that is already loose.

Full chimney rebuilding on a period stack means matching the stone or brick and the mortar, not just getting the geometry back.

 

Stucco Stains That Start at the Flashing, Not the Stack

Most chimney leaks are not chimney leaks. They are flashing leaks at the point where the roof meets the masonry.

Step flashing goes up the side, counterflashing sits in a cut reglet in the mortar joint, and both have to be there for the joint to work.

Caulking over the top of an old counterflashing is the repair we find most often. It buys a season and then fails in the same place.

On the Tudor houses the parapets and buttresses add corners, and every corner is another junction that has to be formed rather than sealed.

We trace the entry point with water before we quote. Guessing at a flashing leak is how a homeowner pays twice.

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Cladding That Suits the Decade

Siding is where a wrong choice shows from the street forever. The material has to belong to the house, not just to the price band.

Stucco on a Mission-style wall is a system, not a coating. It gets repaired as stucco, with the tile roof detailed into it.

Colonial Revival and Arts and Crafts houses carry clapboard or shingle, and the exposure and corner treatment matter as much as the board itself.

On a 1950s house almost anything fits, which is why the decision there is about maintenance and budget rather than period.

 

Patch, Partial or the Whole Elevation

Three answers, and the honest one depends on how much of the wall is bad and whether you can still get the material.

A patch works when the damage is local and the existing cladding is still available. On a period house that is often the deciding question.

A partial replacement makes sense on a single elevation, usually the one facing the weather, if the color break falls at a corner rather than mid-wall.

A full re-side is right when the wall behind needs work anyway. Opening it up once is cheaper than opening it twice.

 

What We Fit on Houses This Old

The material list is short because the house narrows it. We fit what suits the era and what we can still source in a matching profile.

On a tile roof we replace like for like wherever the tile is still made, and we salvage from a hidden slope when it is not.

On asphalt we fit architectural shingles with the underlayment and ice barrier specified for the pitch, not the one that came off.

• Clay and concrete tile, matched by profile rather than by color alone

• Architectural asphalt shingles with ice and water barrier at the eaves

• Cedar and fiber cement in clapboard or shingle exposures

• Aluminum and copper flashing formed on site to the joint

Vinyl and fiber cement both work on the 1950s stock. Fiber cement holds a period profile better if you want the house to read as older.

We will tell you when the cheaper material is the right call. On a rear elevation nobody sees, it usually is.

 

Steps, Walls and Cobblestone Faces

Masonry in Glen Rock spans four eras too. Sandstone, cobblestone, period brick and 1950s block all fail in their own way and want different mortar.

We repoint, rebuild steps, reset walkways and repair retaining walls, and we survey the drainage around them before we touch the stone.

Most of the work is caused by water getting somewhere it should not, which is why the roof and the masonry get looked at together.

 

Repointing Sandstone, Cobble and Block

Repointing is where most masonry gets ruined. Hard modern mortar in a soft old wall pushes the damage into the stone instead of the joint.

On the sandstone and cobblestone work we match a softer mix, because the joint is supposed to be the sacrificial part.

We rake the joint back to sound mortar rather than skimming the face. A skim coat looks right for a year and then sheets off.

Period brick gets the same treatment, matched for color and for the width of the original joint, which is usually thinner than people expect.

On 1950s block a straightforward repoint is usually enough, and our repointing and stonework there is more about drainage than about the joint.

 

What the Frost Cycle Does to Front Steps

Steps fail from underneath. Water gets into the base, freezes, lifts, and the treads come apart from the bottom course upward.

This part of Bergen County runs through the freeze and thaw cycle repeatedly every winter, so the damage is cumulative rather than dramatic.

A tread that rocks under your foot is not a surface problem. Rebedding the top and leaving the base is money spent twice.

Walkways lift for the same reason, usually where a downspout has been discharging onto them for years without anyone noticing.

Retaining walls fail when the drainage behind them stops working. We check the weeps and the backfill before we quote the face.

Where the ground stays wet, we rebuild with drainage built in rather than rebuilding the same wall on the same problem.

 

A Tree Ordinance That Tightened in 2024

Glen Rock rewrote its tree rules on 23 October 2024 and set the strictest removal threshold in our service area. Measure before you assume a tree is too small to matter.

The fee in lieu is $750 per tree, the highest of any town we work in, and whoever does the cutting needs NJ Board of Tree Experts, LTE or ISA credentials.

If a limb has to come off for roof access, that is a permitted action here. It belongs in the schedule, not in a conversation on the morning of the job.

• Measure trunk diameter at breast height, because the permit threshold is six inches

• Apply to the borough for the removal or pruning permit first

• Use a contractor holding NJ Board of Tree Experts, LTE or ISA credentials

• Budget the $750 per-tree fee in lieu if replanting is not possible

 

Licensed, Insured and Actually in the Borough

We hold New Jersey Home Improvement Contractor registration #13VH13359900 and carry insurance. Ask for both, from us and from anyone else you call.

Twenty-five years of this work, most of it in Bergen County, on the same pre-war and post-war mix Glen Rock has.

That matters more than it sounds. Tile, stucco, cobblestone and crenelated parapets are not what a general crew sees in a normal week.

We handle roofing, chimney, siding, masonry and gutter work, so the flashing detail is never somebody else’s problem.

You get the same person from the estimate through the last day, and a photograph record of anything we found once the covering came off.

If the honest answer is that the roof has three more years in it, that is the answer you will get from us.

 

A Written Scope Before Anything Comes Off

Estimates are free and there is no obligation attached to one. We inspect, photograph and write it down.

The scope names the materials, the layers, the flashing detail and what happens if the deck underneath turns out to be bad.

Financing is available if the job is larger than the month allows, and we will tell you what can be staged and what cannot.

You will know the price and the sequence before anybody sets a ladder against the house.

 

The Roofs Either Side of the Borough

The 1920s tile and Tudor work here continues straight into Ridgewood, which has more of it and an older housing stock overall . South, Fair Lawn shares the tree ordinance and the period housing. West, Wyckoff is all split-levels and ranches — a completely different roof.