Roofing Contractor for Pittsburgh City Neighborhoods

Roofing inside the city limits from Cam and Drew Kinnee. Brookline, Beechview, Banksville, Mt. Washington, Overbrook, Carrick and the rest of the city. GAF certified, family owned. Free estimates. 412-844-5999.

This page is about roofs inside the city limits, not the metro area. We are twenty minutes up Route 19 from Canonsburg, which puts Brookline, Beechview, Banksville, Overbrook, Carrick, and Mt. Washington closer to our shop than most of the suburbs people assume we work in. City roofing is a different job from suburban roofing: older houses, tighter streets, steeper lots, party walls, and a lot of low-slope rear additions that nobody built to last.

Which Pittsburgh Neighborhoods We Work In

Kinnee Brothers Roofing is family-owned and based in Canonsburg, and the city neighborhoods we are in most are the ones on the South Hills side of the Liberty Tubes: Brookline, Beechview, Banksville, Overbrook, Carrick, and Mt. Washington. We also work the rest of Pittsburgh's residential neighborhoods, Bloomfield, Lawrenceville, Squirrel Hill, Shadyside, the North Side, the South Side, and out to the East End. If your roof is in the city, we work on it.

The South Hills city neighborhoods run heavily to brick and frame houses built between the 1910s and the 1940s, set close together on narrow lots off Brookline Boulevard, West Liberty Avenue, Banksville Road, and Brownsville Road. They are older than almost anything in the suburbs south of them and they were built the same way: plank sheathing, steep simple gables on the front block, and a lower-slope addition hung off the back at some point after the fact.

Row Houses, Brick Colonials, and Hillside Homes Across Pittsburgh

Pittsburgh's residential housing was largely built between 1890 and 1940. Brick row houses in Lawrenceville, the South Side, the Strip District, and parts of the North Side have steep gable roofs, small footprints, and original sheathing that is usually plank rather than plywood. The biggest issue on these houses is flashing at the party walls between rowhomes. Water gets in at the joint between two roofs and runs down between the walls. We do a lot of step flashing rework on Pittsburgh rowhomes.

Tudor and Colonial homes in the larger-lot parts of Brookline and Overbrook, and in Squirrel Hill, Shadyside, Highland Park, and Point Breeze, often have complex rooflines with multiple gables, dormers, and original slate or tile that is now near end of life. We replace a lot of original slate with high-end architectural designer shingles (GAF Camelot II is the popular slate-look option) that give the same visual character at a fraction of the maintenance cost.

Slope houses on Mt. Washington, the North Side bluffs, and the Hill District are often three-story homes built into hillsides with steep, complex roof structures. Access alone is a challenge. We sometimes need scaffolding to safely work these roofs, which adds to project cost. Working a roof where the next building is two feet away means tarping and debris control matter more. We do not damage neighboring properties.

Access is the part homeowners underestimate on a city job. On a lot of Beechview and Mt. Washington streets there is nowhere to park a dumpster, the driveway is below the house rather than beside it, and the back of the roof can only be reached over a neighbor's yard. We look at all of that during the estimate and tell you the plan up front, including where the dumpster sits and which days the street will be tight.

Flat and Low-Slope Rear Additions on Pittsburgh Houses

City Pittsburgh roofs deal with the same Western PA weather as the suburbs, including ice damming, freeze-thaw, summer storms, and hail, plus city-specific problems: tighter access and material staging, adjacent property considerations, and snow load on flat or low-slope back ell roofs that hold snow far longer than the steeper sections do.

That back ell is the single most common source of city leaks we get called for. Almost every older Pittsburgh house has one, a kitchen or bath addition off the rear with a nearly flat roof, and shingles do not belong on it. If somebody put architectural shingles on a two-in-twelve rear roof, it is going to leak, and no amount of caulk fixes that. Those sections need a proper low-slope membrane and a correct transition where the flat meets the steep roof above it.

The other recurring city failure is masonry. Pittsburgh houses have tall brick chimneys, brick party walls, and parapets that have been through a hundred years of freeze-thaw. When water shows up on a bedroom ceiling near an interior wall, the leak is usually the chimney counter flashing or a deteriorated crown, not the shingles around it. We check the masonry before we quote a roof, because replacing shingles around a bad chimney just moves the money.

Roof Repair in Pittsburgh

City repair work is its own trade. The list we run most often inside Pittsburgh: step flashing at party walls between attached houses, chimney counter flashing cut into brick rather than smeared with tar, valley repairs where a rear addition meets the main roof, patching a low-slope membrane on a back ell, and re-securing shingles on a steep hillside plane that took wind off an exposed slope.

Older city housing also produces surprises at tear-off. Two and three layers of old shingles, gapped plank sheathing, and decking that has been quietly wet under a bad valley for years. On repair work that is usually good news, because it means we can open up one section, fix what is actually wrong, and leave you a roof with real life left instead of selling a replacement you do not need yet.

If it will hold, we repair it. If it will not, we say so before you spend money, and we show you the photos that back it up. Our roof repair page covers the full range of what we handle across the city.

Roofing Services for Pittsburgh Homeowners

Three things we do for city homeowners. Full roof replacement on a complete GAF system, including designer shingles where the house calls for it, with City of Pittsburgh permits pulled and inspections scheduled by us. Roof repair on flashing, valleys, chimneys, and low-slope rear sections. And gutters and downspouts, which on tight city lots is more important than most people think, because a downspout dumping against a foundation two feet from the neighbor's wall becomes two people's problem in a hurry.