A True Wood Roof for a Middletown, RI Home — Alaskan Yellow Cedar Premium Tapersawn Shakes

Like most Pinnacle roofing projects, the work was completed in a single day — minimizing disruption for the homeowner.

Pinnacle makes every roof affordable with monthly financing options to make your home project affordable with low monthly payments, including 0% interest for 18 months.

This Middletown home has always worn wood, and the owners wanted to keep it that way — properly. Pinnacle Roofing & Skylights replaced the tired cedar with Alaskan Yellow Cedar 5/8″ Premium Tapersawn shakes: the most durable species you can put on a wood roof, cut thick and installed by hand.

Scope of Work

The crew stripped the old wood roof, prepared the deck with the ventilation and underlayment detailing a wood roof demands — cedar needs to breathe from both faces — and then installed the Alaskan Yellow Cedar shakes course by course. Every shake is nailed by hand, every course gapped for expansion, every valley and penetration flashed in metal sized for wood-roof movement.

What We Installed (And Why)

Alaskan Yellow Cedar is the ultimate shake species: immensely hard, dense, and fine-textured — the same wood used in boatbuilding. Compared to the more common western red cedar, it is far less likely to erode or curl, which is exactly the failure mode that ends most wood roofs. The 5/8″ premium tapersawn cut adds mass and a crisp shadow line.

Fresh, it is a warm honey blonde; over the seasons it weathers to the beautiful silver-gray that makes Aquidneck Island’s shingle-style homes what they are. No stain, no paint — the color program is the wood itself, aging on schedule.

Project Photo Gallery

Completed Alaskan yellow cedar shake roof, Middletown

Good To Know: How long does an Alaskan Yellow Cedar roof last?

Installed correctly and allowed to breathe, AYC is the longest-lived wood roof available — its density and natural oils resist the erosion and curling that retire red cedar roofs early. The variables that matter are installation details: ventilation beneath the shakes, correct exposure, stainless or hot-dipped fasteners, and flashing that accommodates the wood’s seasonal movement. The species does the rest.

Why This Approach Works

Wood roofs fail from moisture trapped beneath them, not weather on top of them. Building the assembly to ventilate both faces of every shake — and choosing the hardest cedar species cut thick — attacks both causes at once. It is a roof built the traditional way, with the best modern understanding of why the tradition works.

Why Pinnacle

Pinnacle Roofing & Skylights has been installing roofs across Rhode Island since 2012, and every project gets the same treatment: do it once, do it right, back it with the best warranty available. We install and service wood, asphalt, and specialty roofs across Aquidneck Island, and we respect what a real cedar roof means to a home like this. With more than 100 five-star Google reviews and an A+ BBB rating, our track record speaks for itself.

Middletown, RI

Middletown sits between Newport’s grandeur and the Sakonnet’s farms — beach neighborhoods, orchard land, and homes where natural materials simply belong. Pinnacle serves Middletown with the full range: cedar, asphalt, and everything the island climate tests.