Some buildings belong to one family. A church belongs to everyone who’s ever walked through its doors.

St. John’s Lutheran Church has stood over its corner of Albany for generations — white clapboard, a steeple the neighborhood navigates by, and a historic cemetery resting just behind the sanctuary. When it came time for a new roof, the congregation needed more than a contractor. They needed a crew that understood what this building means to the people who keep it.

Here’s how we re-roofed a landmark.

The Project at a Glance

This was a full replacement covering 40 squares of pitched roofing — the sanctuary, the steeple-side slopes, the parish wings, and the garage building — plus 2 squares of new EPDM on the property’s flat section. Every slope came off down to the deck, every ridge and valley was rebuilt as one continuous system, and the whole property went under new protection in a single project.

That last part matters for a property like this one. A church campus usually isn’t one roof — it’s several buildings from several decades, each with its own quirks. Replacing them together, with one crew and one warranty, means no seams between “old work” and “new work” for water to find.

Why IKO Driftshake

For a white clapboard church, the roof is half the architecture. The congregation chose IKO shingles in Driftshake — a weathered wood-shake blend of warm greys and browns that suits a traditional building the way cedar once did, without cedar’s maintenance or fire risk. From the street, the new roof looks like it has always been there. That’s the goal on a building like this: protection that doesn’t announce itself.

The system is backed by GoldShield protection from IKO — coverage that matters to a congregation planning in decades, not years.

Pitched and Flat — One System, One Crew

Most roofers do shingles. Fewer do flat roofing well. A property that has both usually ends up with two contractors, two schedules, and a seam of blame where their work meets.

Our crews install both. The 2 squares of flat roofing here went under new EPDM — a fully adhered rubber membrane that’s the standard for low-slope sections in the Northeast — tied into the shingle system’s flashing so the transition sheds water as reliably as any ridge. One crew, one timeline, one company responsible for every square foot.

What It Takes to Roof a Church

Institutional buildings come with their own rules. A congregation’s roof gets decided by a board and paid for by a community, which means the estimate has to be clear, the price has to hold, and the work has to respect the life of the building — services, events, and the quiet of the cemetery grounds next door. We kept the site clean, the schedule tight, and the disruption minimal, because a church shouldn’t have to pause being a church while its roof is replaced.

Churches, Schools, and Commercial Roofing in the Capital Region

Home Evolution Roofing has been protecting buildings across Upstate New York for 20 years — more than 17,500 projects completed, 930+ Google reviews, and a BBB A+ rating. From our Albany headquarters we handle commercial and institutional roofing across the Capital Region: churches, schools, multi-family buildings, and businesses, in shingle, metal, flat, and everything between.

If your organization’s roof is showing its age, send us the address. We’ll walk it, put a firm number in writing, and give your board a straight answer about what the building actually needs.