Class 4 Shingle Roof & New Decking in Cherry Creek, Denver

Erol's Tailoring and Alterations in the Cherry Creek North neighborhood of Denver, Colorado, with its completed IKO Nordic Class 4 impact-resistant shingle roof

Project Capsule:Hail damaged the roof on Erol's Tailoring and Alterations in Cherry Creek North, an older Denver house that has been a working storefront for decades. CRC documented the storm damage, got the claim approved, and then found what a lot of older Denver roofs are hiding: three layers of roofing over the original wood shakes, all nailed to spaced boards with no solid deck underneath. The whole roof was re-decked and rebuilt with IKO Nordic Class 4 impact-resistant shingles.

Project Facts

Location	Cherry Creek North, Denver, Colorado 80206
CRC office	Denver Office (Front Range)
Property	Erol's Tailoring and Alterations, a small business operating out of an older single-family house
Cause of loss	Colorado hail storm
Roof system	IKO Nordic IR Class 4 impact-resistant architectural shingles with matching IKO Ultra HP hip and ridge IR and IKO Leading Edge Plus starter, over synthetic underlayment and all-new solid decking
Scope	Approved hail insurance claim: full tear-off of three roofing layers and the original wood shakes, complete re-deck, new drip edge and flashing, and a Class 4 shingle roof

A Storefront That Is Really a House

Cherry Creek North is full of buildings like this one: houses built as houses, now working as shops. Erol's Tailoring and Alterations sits in one of them, a steep-gabled Denver house with fish-scale shingle siding in the gable end and a tailoring sign over the front door. It is residential construction doing a commercial job, which means the roof is a steep-slope shingle roof, but the building it protects is somebody's livelihood. Every day the roof is open is a day the business is exposed.

Front entrance of Erol's Tailoring and Alterations, a converted older house in the Cherry Creek North neighborhood of Denver, Colorado, before its roof replacement — The storefront before the reroof: a converted older Denver house in Cherry Creek North, still doing business under a roof that had been layered over for decades.

Proving the Hail Damage

Hail is easiest to argue about on a shingle and hardest to argue about on soft metal. Metal caps, vents, and flashing take a clean dent that does not wash off, does not weather away, and does not depend on anyone's opinion. CRC inspected the property, marked the impacts the way an adjuster does, and built the claim on evidence a carrier could not wave off.

Hail impact dents circled in chalk on a painted metal surface at a Cherry Creek storefront in Denver, Colorado, documenting storm damage for an insurance claim — Hail strikes circled and marked during the inspection, the clearest evidence on the property.

Chalk-marked hail dents scattered across a light-colored metal cap on a building in Cherry Creek North, Denver, Colorado — The same pattern of impacts on a second metal surface, documented for the carrier.

What the Tear-Off Uncovered

With the claim approved, the crew started stripping the roof, and the building started telling its history. Under the top layer of asphalt shingles was another asphalt layer in red, and under that were the original wood shakes, still nailed down from whenever this roof was first built. Three roofing systems, stacked.

Roof tear-off in progress in Denver, Colorado, showing grey asphalt shingles over a red asphalt layer over the original wood shakes — Layer by layer: grey asphalt over red asphalt over the original wood shakes.

Layering a new roof over an old one is a shortcut somebody takes to save a tear-off, and it hides problems rather than fixing them. Each layer adds weight, traps heat, and makes it impossible to see the condition of the wood underneath. It also makes the next roofer's job bigger, which is exactly what happened here.

Close-up of stacked asphalt shingle layers and a rusted drip edge at the roof edge of an older building in Denver, Colorado — The edge detail told the story before tear-off: stacked layers sitting on a rusted-through drip edge.

Deteriorated wood shakes and split decking boards exposed at the eave of an older Denver, Colorado, roof, with a gap open to the attic — Split shakes and deteriorated boards at the eave, with daylight showing through into the roof cavity.

The Real Find: No Solid Deck

Once the shakes came off, the actual problem was in plain view. There was no plywood or OSB under this roof at all. The original wood shakes had been nailed to spaced board decking, rows of 1-inch boards with open gaps between them. That was standard practice when the house was built, and it was correct for wood shakes, which are meant to breathe from below. It is not a deck an asphalt shingle can be installed over.

Bare spaced board decking with open gaps exposed across a steep roof in Denver, Colorado, after the original wood shakes were removed — The original spaced board decking, exposed. Correct for wood shakes, unusable for asphalt shingles.

Asphalt shingles need a continuous, solid surface to nail into. Nails driven into a gap hold nothing, the shingles telegraph every board line, and the roof has no shear strength. So the entire roof had to be re-decked, every slope, before a single shingle could go on.

This is the part homeowners and business owners get blindsided by, and it is the reason it matters who writes the claim. A re-deck discovered halfway through a tear-off, on a roof already open to the sky, is an emergency conversation about money. Caught and documented properly, it is a supplement the carrier pays. On older Denver houses, especially anything old enough to have worn wood shakes, re-decking should be expected, not treated as a surprise.

CRC crew installing new OSB roof decking over exposed spaced boards on a steep roof in Cherry Creek North, Denver, Colorado — New sheathing going down over the old spaced boards, working up the slope.

New OSB roof decking installed around a dormer window on an older house in Denver, Colorado, during a full roof replacement — Decking carried tight around the dormer, where the old roof had the least support.

Completed new roof decking on Erol's Tailoring in Denver, Colorado, with a large pile of removed wood shakes stacked in the parking lot below — New sheathing down across the slope, with the removed wood shakes piled below. Everything on that pile came off this roof.

The New Roof

On top of the new deck the crew ran synthetic underlayment, set new drip edge and step flashing, and installed IKO Nordic IR, a Class 4 impact-resistant architectural shingle. Nordic uses an SBS polymer-modified asphalt, a rubberized formulation that stays flexible and absorbs an impact instead of cracking, and it carries the Class 4 rating from the UL 2218 steel-ball impact test, the highest rating a shingle can earn. The hips and ridges were capped with the matching IKO Ultra HP hip and ridge in the same impact-rated line, so the most exposed courses on the roof are not the weakest.

Synthetic underlayment installed over new roof decking on a steep roof in Denver, Colorado, with Class 4 shingle bundles staged along the slope — Dried in with synthetic underlayment, with shingle bundles staged and ready to run.

Completed IKO Nordic Class 4 impact-resistant architectural shingle roof on a steep hip in Cherry Creek North, Denver, Colorado — The finished Class 4 shingle field, running clean down the hip on a deck that is finally solid.

The Result

The business kept its doors open, and the building came out of the storm with a roof that is better than anything it has had: a solid deck for the first time in its life, current flashing and edge metal, and an impact-rated shingle built for the hail that will come back. Because the re-deck was documented as part of the loss instead of discovered as a surprise, it was handled inside the approved claim rather than becoming a mid-project bill the owner had not planned for.

Why Class 4 Shingles Matter in Denver

The Front Range takes some of the most expensive hail in the country, and Denver sits in the middle of it. A Class 4 impact-resistant shingle is built to take that hit, and most Colorado carriers offer a standing premium discount for installing one, which means the upgrade can pay for part of itself every year. We go through the math in our guide to Class 4 impact-resistant shingles in Colorado.

Why CRC for an Older Denver Roof

Older buildings do not give up their surprises until the roof is open, and by then the wrong contractor is asking the owner for more money. CRC inspects for what is likely underneath before the claim is written, documents it for the carrier, and prices the real scope. Our Denver office serves the Front Range, installs architectural and impact-resistant shingle roofs, and handles storm and hail insurance claims for homes and for the small businesses that operate out of them.

Get a Storm-Damage Roof Assessment

If hail has moved through Cherry Creek or anywhere along the Front Range, and especially if your building is old enough to have wood shakes buried under it, find out what you actually have before you need to. Call our Denver office at (720) 893-7663 or click to request a free roof inspection.