Project profile: Victorian home in Washington

By Emma Peterson. 

Exploring Valentine Roofing’s award‑winning reroof of a historic Tacoma home. 

In Tacoma, Washington, there is a neighborhood featuring shady trees, manicured lawns and historic homes called North End. One such home on this street is a stunning historic 1889 Victorian which was recently reroofed by local roofing company Valentine Roofing. – This is the project that won Valentine their second Roofing Contractors Association of Washington (RCAW) Excellence in Roofing Award in two years!  

To learn more about this project and the win, we spoke with the Valentine team for a short interview. Jenna Esteves, one of their project coordinators, opened the conversation by sharing a bit about the house.

She shared, “This home stayed with the original family who built the home. It was originally the home of a husband, his wife and their daughter until 2006 when the daughter, at that point in her 90s, sold it to the current owners, Todd and Kim. They did a ton of refurbishing on it, making sure to preserve the historical look. That preservation of history is so important to Todd and Kim, they even have like artifacts from the original family displayed in the house.” 

Where Valentine came into the picture was when the current owners began looking for a team who could reroof the home for them without losing the historical charm they loved so much. However, that was far from a simple task, as that same charm created unique challenges when it came to the roof. Rochelle Robles, the project engineer on this reroof, shared some insight into these challenges:  

For starters, as a traditional Victorian home, there’s a turret. And then there's a bisected roof line on that turret. Below the turret is the upper level, and then there’s a floating skirt before you get to the lower level. There was also the curvature of the roof line, the fact that the home was such a high 12/12 pitch, the cap metal details and the built-in gutters to account for. So, it was a very difficult project both in terms of technicality and in terms of keeping our team safe as they worked. 

While that was a lot to navigate, the Valentine team rose to the occasion, hand-cutting shingles and custom fabricating metal on-site for the project. LeeAnn Stevens, Valentine’s operations manager, shared her thoughts on the crew’s incredible work, saying, “Every member of the team, from the estimators who worked with the Todd and Kim to figure out the vision to the production team coordinating all the moving parts and of course the crew, shoutout to the foreman Elmer, on the roof, really just put their heart into it. We’re so proud of how everyone showed up and made sure every detail was cared for.” 

And getting all that effort recognized with an RCAW Excellence in Roofing Award was just icing on the cake for a project well done!  As Valentine CEO Steven Heller put it, “Winning this award for the second year in a row is a tremendous honor for our team. This project reflects the level of care, craftsmanship, and coordination our team brings to every home. Protecting a historic property like this requires precision at every stage, and we are incredibly proud of the finished result.”