Worker nailing shingles quickly - GIF

[old kodger]

Good roofing crews are impressive to watch. A neighbor had his house done a few years back. Not a huge house, but not tiny either. Roof is very steep (too steep to walk) with couple of dormers and more than one roof line due to successive additions through the years.

The crew arrived in the morning, and it was clear everyone had a particular role and knew how to do it. They had the roof stripped and any soft spots in the sheathing fixed in just the first half of the morning. Cleanup was continuous, stuff had barely hit the ground before it was picked up and in the dumpster trailer they brought.

When they started laying shingles they went along in a way that suggested that they had been working together for a long time. Two guys rough laid out the shingles ahead of the two guys nailing them down, one guy two tiers above he other, who was doing the next two rows down. Another couple of guys kept a flow of bundles moving up to the roof. The level of choreography was quite a thing. Another crew was doing the same on the other side of the roof. These guys were good and worked like a team of ants.

Most impressive to me was that this was all done without anyone taking unreasonable risks, the guys working on the roof were in fall protection harnesses and tethered off. They were wearing safety glasses, gloves where appropriate, and hard hats. They wrapped up by about 5PM and when they left, you would be hard pressed to know any work had been done there. Roof looked great and every scrap was gone and the entire lawn was gone over with a magnet to get any stray nails.

Here we have a classic example of 4 hours mandolin practice per night, in a different trade.