It is the most common complaint in residential roofing. You agreed a price, the crew arrived, the old roof came off, and by mid-morning someone is telling you it will cost more. It feels like a bait and switch, and sometimes it is. Often it is not. Knowing the difference is worth real money.
Decking. Until the old roofing is removed, the sheathing underneath is hidden from everyone, including the person writing your quote. No inspection method sees through shingles. Attic access helps enormously — you can read staining, board spacing, and rot from below — but attics are often partly floored, insulated, or inaccessible, and the eaves where damage concentrates are the hardest area to view.
So a decking surprise is a real category. In Seattle it is a common one, because our housing stock and climate combine to produce rot and inadequate substrate at a rate above the national average. Discovering skip sheathing that needs overlaying, or a rotten section around a valley, is a legitimate change in scope.
Four tests, and they are easy to apply in the moment.
Was a unit price agreed in writing beforehand? A properly written estimate states a per-sheet or per-board price for decking replacement and says how many sheets are included in the base bid. If that language exists, the change is arithmetic: count the sheets, multiply, done. If the estimate said decking would be billed as needed with no rate, you were handed an open-ended charge, and the moment it gets invoked is the moment you have zero leverage — roof open, crew on site, rain forecast.
Can they show you? Ask to see it. Photographs at minimum, and if it is safe, from a ladder yourself. Rotten sheathing is unmistakable — dark, soft, delaminated, sometimes crumbling at the edges. Skip sheathing is visually obvious, spaced boards with daylight between them. A contractor operating in good faith will be glad to show you, because it justifies the charge. Reluctance is informative.
Is the quantity plausible? Rot is usually localised around a failure point — a valley, a chimney, a vent, an eave with a long-standing gutter problem. If you are told that most of the deck needs replacing on a roof that was not leaking noticeably, ask for the reasoning and the photographs. Widespread deck failure with no interior symptoms points toward condensation, which is a real and serious finding, but it is a different diagnosis and it comes with a different set of recommendations.
Was it foreseeable? A contractor who inspected the attic, saw the build year, and knew the housing stock should have raised skip sheathing as a likely scenario during the estimate. Finding it on tear-off day and presenting it as a shock suggests the estimate was written without much thought. That is not fraud, but it is a reason to be more careful about the numbers that follow.
Decking is the big one, but a few others are genuine.
An unexpected extra layer. Sometimes a roof believed to have one layer has two, which means more tear-off labour and roughly double the disposal tonnage. This is partly foreseeable from the edge inspection described elsewhere on this site, so it should be rare.
Rotten rafter tails or fascia. Frequently revealed only when the drip edge and lower courses come off. This is structural work and is legitimately priced separately.
Chimney masonry. Deteriorated mortar or a cracked crown is a chimney problem, not a roofing one, but it becomes visible during a re-roof and it needs addressing while access exists.
Get the unit price in writing. Get the included allowance stated. Require photographic documentation and a count of any replaced material. Ask, during the estimate, what they expect to find and why — a contractor who has been in your attic should have an informed answer.
And ask one more question that almost nobody asks: what is the procedure if you find something. A good answer describes stopping, documenting, contacting you, and getting approval before proceeding. A vague answer predicts a conversation you will not enjoy having on a Tuesday morning with your roof open.
A change order is not a phone call and a verbal number. It is a document, and it should contain five things:
A description of what was found, specific enough to be checked — location, extent, condition. Not additional decking required.
Photographic evidence of the condition, taken before it was covered or replaced.
A quantity — number of sheets, linear feet, square footage.
The unit rate being applied, which should match the rate in the original contract if one was stated there.
Your written authorisation before the work proceeds.
The last point is the one that gets skipped under time pressure, and it is the one that matters. Verbal approval given on the phone while a crew waits is difficult to dispute afterwards and impossible to verify.
A photograph and a text message confirming the quantity and price takes ninety seconds and creates a record for both parties. Contractors operating properly are generally happy with this, because it protects them from a disputed invoice as much as it protects you.
Handle it in the moment rather than at invoicing, because your position is far stronger before the work is done.
Ask to see it, in person if you can. You are entitled to look at your own house. If it is unsafe for you to go up, ask for photographs taken from angles that show location and extent, not close crops that could be anywhere.
Ask them to stop while you consider it. A pause of an hour is reasonable. If the response is that work cannot pause, ask what specifically is time-critical — sometimes the answer is legitimate, such as weather closing in with the deck open, and sometimes it is pressure.
Get a second opinion if the number is large. On a substantial claimed discovery, another roofer can look at photographs, and on a very large one can come out.
Do not pay under protest without documenting the protest. If you disagree and pay anyway to get the job finished, put the disagreement in writing at the time. It preserves your position.
Washington requires contractors to be registered, bonded, and insured, and registration status is publicly verifiable. The bond exists partly to provide recourse where a registered contractor fails to meet obligations, though bond amounts are limited and claims have procedural requirements and time limits.
Practical implications: verify registration before hiring rather than after a dispute, keep every document and photograph, and make requests and objections in writing so there is a record. Small claims court handles disputes below a threshold amount without lawyers, which is a realistic avenue for a contested change order.
Requirements and thresholds change, and none of this is legal advice — for a significant dispute, the state contractor licensing authority is the right first call and an attorney is the right second one. The general point is that documentation is what makes any of these avenues usable, and documentation is free while the work is happening and impossible to create afterwards.
This post is part of our in-depth coverage of roof replacement in Seattle.
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