Serving Houghton Lake & Roscommon County
Houghton Lake is Michigan's largest inland lake, ringed with thousands of cottages, many of them empty all winter and more of them turning into year-round homes. Here's how we look after both kinds.
Amazing contractors and you cannot go wrong hiring them!! Now for why- After a long winter and wet spring we arrived at our house in April to find our sun porch flooded and moldy. We realized the roof which is called a SIP roof, had been compromised and needed attention. I started the search and had many people come and say they didn’t know what to do, or wanted to add particle board on top and take out the skylights (our favorite feature of the room). Others wanted to build a second roof over it, but it blends into the shingle roof and that would never work. Then we had Chris from Cherry Town out. He recognized the style of room - more often seen in Florida - and had an idea. 💡 He spoke with other friends and contractors and they agreed it would work in Michigan!!! We got to keep the skylights and had a coating applied to the top to seal everything. Much more complicated than that, including power washing a very dirty roof and taping the seams, but what matters most is we had a solution that would work!!! His team came over the 4th of July weekend and were able to complete the work that had to be done when hot. It is wonderful to sit out on the porch and enjoy the rain knowing it won’t leak!!! My dad is 94 and this is his house -he couldn’t be happier to have his porch back in working order!!!Thank you Cherry Town for such amazing attention to detail and doing a fantastic job. Clean up was incredible and so appreciated as not everyone does that well.
Our office is at 104 S Union Street Suite 208 in downtown Traverse City. From there, Houghton Lake is about 70 miles southeast, usually an hour and twenty-five minutes by road.
That's a real drive, so we plan Houghton Lake jobs as full days. We bring everything the job needs on the first trip and schedule around the forecast, so the work gets done in as few visits as possible and your roof isn't left open overnight.
Houghton Lake covers about 22,000 acres, more than any other inland lake in Michigan. A surveyor, John Brink, first recorded it in 1838 as Red Lake, and in 1852 it was renamed for Douglass Houghton, Michigan's first state geologist.
Logging came first. Timber cut around the lake was floated down the Muskegon River to the sawmills at Muskegon. When the forests were gone, the lake became something else: a summer place, with thousands of seasonal cottages built along its shore. Every January the frozen lake hosts Tip-Up Town USA, an ice-fishing festival that runs through the month and wraps up on the fourth weekend.
The community itself is unincorporated, in Roscommon County, and it has been growing fast: from 3,427 people in 2010 to 5,294 in the 2020 census. M-55 runs east and west through town, and US-127 runs just west of the lake.
The empty winter comes first. A cottage closed from fall to spring hides every problem it has. A small flashing leak, a lifted shingle or an ice dam at the eaves can drip for months with nobody there to see it, and the first anyone knows is a stained ceiling or a soft floor in spring. That is exactly the story our featured review tells.
Conversion comes next. A cottage built for summer often has a thinly insulated, poorly vented attic. Once it is heated all winter, warm air escaping into that attic melts snow from underneath, the water refreezes at the cold eaves, and the ice dam that forms pushes water up under the shingles. On a converted cottage, the problem often starts in the attic, not on the roof.
The lake does the rest. Homes on a lake this size take wind across miles of open water, which lifts shingle edges and drives rain sideways into siding seams and under trim.
So we treat the outside of the house as one system: attic ventilation fixed, ice and water shield at the eaves and valleys, flashing done properly, and for seasonal homes a check before winter so spring does not start with a repair.
Repair and replacement for cottages and lake homes: ice and water shield at the eaves and valleys, edges fastened for wind off the lake, and ventilation fixed so a heated cottage stops building ice dams.
More about roofing →Summer cottages were rarely vented for winter. New vented soffit is often the first step in turning one into a year-round home.
More about soffit →A low-upkeep choice for a house you are not at every week, with proper house wrap and flashing behind it so wind-driven rain stays out of the wall.
More about vinyl siding →When a cottage is becoming a year-round home, we plan the roof, siding, gutters and trim together as one job instead of patching them one at a time.
More about exterior remodeling →Everything we do on the outside of a house:
We come out to Houghton Lake, walk the outside of the house and get into the attic where we can, because that is where ice dams and soft decking start.
You get the scope, the materials and the price in writing before anything starts. If a repair will do, we tell you.
Our own crew, working to the manufacturer spec, scheduled around the weather rather than ahead of a storm.
We magnet-sweep for nails, haul the debris away and go over the finished job with you before we leave.
If you live here year round, we'll walk the house with you. If it's a summer place, we'll send photos and a written plan so you can decide from wherever you are. Either way, if a repair will do, we'll tell you instead of selling you a replacement you don't need.
Tell us what your roof, siding or gutters are doing and we'll come out and take a look.
Get A Free Estimateor call (231) 377-3620