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A straightforward single-storey re-roof is a run of working days on the roof, not a vague fortnight. The strip, the new roof, and the flashings set the length. Rain, two-storey access, and solar add days around that core. Roof Revival Melbourne writes the sequence before the start date so the house is open to the weather for as short a span as the job allows.
Owners ask for a number of days because they need to plan work, school, and the dog. The honest answer is a range tied to the roof in front of us, not a slogan. A simple hip on one storey, with tiles or sheets that come off cleanly and no solar, moves faster than a cut-up roof with three penetrations, a chimney, and a lane too narrow for the bin. Weather sits on top of both. Melbourne will hand you a wet Wednesday in any month. The program has to be able to pause without leaving the bedrooms open.
We would rather name the stages than pretend the whole job is one blur. Strip. Dry in. Flashings, valleys, and gutters if they are in the scope. Handover. Each stage has a visible end. If a quote says “about two weeks” and cannot say what happens on day one, the two weeks is a mood.
The strip is the noisy, messy day, and it is often more than one day once the area grows. Tiles come off, battens are checked, and sarking that has earned replacement comes out with them. A roof that was nailed in the 1970s does not always release cleanly. Hidden rot at the eaves, or a batten that breaks as the last course lifts, is a variation with a photo, not a reason to rush the new sheets on over soft timber.
Fixing the new roof is the middle of the job. Tile relays have a rhythm of battens, underlay, and courses. Metal roofs have a rhythm of sheets, screws, and laps. Complex geometry — dormers, a lower roof dying into an upper wall, a box gutter between two wings — adds time because every junction is made, not unrolled. Flashings are not a last-hour extra. They are the part that decides whether the new roof leaks beside a sound field.
The job people are booking is roof replacement in Melbourne. Planning bands often start around $20,000 for a normal house. The calendar is not printed on that band. A steep two-storey roof can take longer than a larger low roof because the hours are in the access, not only in the squares.
We do not strip a whole roof on a morning when the forecast is a known dump, and we do not leave a house unprotected overnight because the truck was late. Temporary drying-in is part of the program. It is ugly and it is correct. If rain arrives mid-strip, the priority is the ceiling, not the pride of a tidy site. You should hear that plan before we start, including who watches the radar.
Summer heat slows metal work in the early afternoon. Winter shortens the daylight and wets the battens. Neither season is a reason to avoid a re-roof that the roof needs. Both seasons change how many squares get finished in a day. A program that only works in perfect October weather is a program that will slip.
Two-storey houses in the east, and tight inner blocks with a sideway the width of a wheelbarrow, change the loading. Scaffold goes up before the strip and comes down after the last flashing. That is extra days on the program even when the roofing crew is not on the roof the whole time. The note on two-storey access is about price. The same constraint is about time.
Solar panels come off before the old roof comes off, and they go back when the new roof can take them. That is a second trade with its own booking. If the electrician can only attend on a Thursday, the roof program wraps around that Thursday. We do not pull panels as a side hobby, and we do not describe the electrical work. We sequence it.
Skip bins, a loading zone, and a neighbour’s driveway are small lines that eat a morning when they are forgotten. Inner terraces sometimes need the bin on the street and the tiles carried out. Say so in the quote. A surprise bin on the nature strip is how a job loses a day to a conversation that should have happened last week.
You can usually stay in the house. The rooms stay. The ceiling stays, unless we have told you a wet section needs opening. Dust finds its way down on strip day anyway. Cover beds and clear the manhole path before we arrive. Pets and home offices hate the strip morning more than they hate the fixing days. If you can move one call off that morning, move that one.
Ask for the order in writing: scaffold, solar off, strip, new roof, flashings, solar on, scaffold down. Dates move when it rains. The order should not move. A crew that starts the coating conversation, or the colour conversation, in the middle of a strip has mixed two different jobs. Replacement is the lid. Colour systems belong to roofs that are staying.
Send suburb, storeys and two roof photos. Roof Revival Melbourne — 0426 516 883 · info@roofrevivalmelbourne.com.au
