Hi Rileysmom, You will want to have continous soffit or eave venting for the best application with radiant barrier along with the ridgeventing. If you have open rafter tails for eaves, it would simply be making every rafter block a vent by drilling holes and installing screen material,(eave vents). If you have a soffit un-vented, it would entail installing a continous soffit venting along the length of the soffit material. The radiant barrier is simply rolls of foil faced over kraft paper typicall 50" wide,( 2" overlap), stapled to the underside of the rafters. You hold the first course up 3" from the soffit or eave venting and overlap it up to the ridge running the barrier perpindicular to the rafters and overlapping at the ridge as well. Foil taping the seams insures no sagging or openings there. The heated air is trapped between the roof sheathing/underlayment/sheathing and the radiant barrier on the underside of the rafters in the rafter cavaty. The heated air is pushed out the ridgeventing by way of air coming in at the soffit or eave vents keeping the attic sapce cooler not allowing the heated air from the roof in. Without radiant but utilizing the ridgevent/soffit venting, you would want to block off the gable venting. You wouldn't have to remove them, simply block them off from the back side. If you install the radiant, I would leave them open for the attic to breathe. We got our radiant barrier form the link below. Mr. Sumpolec is a retired NASA engineer whose career was extensively geared towards working with radiant barrier and has incorporated installs in residential applications. He leaves his phone # on his website and was very helpful on our build with info and install advise for our application, which is geared for holding the heat in during the colder months. I'm still going to go with the underside install in two small attic spaces we have for keeping them cooler, but we are building at 4500' in the sierras, so it doesn't get real warm there except a short season in the summer. Here's the link: Here is a link that might be useful: radiant barrier

I didn't get an opportunity to look at homes with Colonial Slate. I admit, this was a poor choice on my part. The roofer didn't have any addresses in the vicinity and I emailed Certainteed but never heard from them. The roofer didn't have many install dates available so I had to give him a colour to proceed. Now the Colonial Slate is here I'm wondering about the amount of white/light grey in the shingles but I think you're right that it will look much different when it's on the roof and viewed from the ground at an angle. Plus it's raining today and the white on some of the shingles that are damp have taken on a duller grey colour. My concern with Colonial Slate is mainly around the pattern being an overtly dark/light ("mosaic") pattern appearing on the roof. I would prefer a more consistent darker look but I guess I'll find out once it gets installed in a couple of days...too late to go looking at homes now and arguing with the roofer to change the shingles he's already delivered! The other frustrating piece is that when you search for Colonial Slate online, you find very different pictures from homeowners claiming they have Colonial slate (some look like exactly what I'm looking for including the Certainteed website and roof visual tool they have, other homeowners are showing a dark/light mosaic look). Thanks everyone, I'll plan to post pictures once the shingles are up on the roof...here's hoping Colonial Slate doesn't disappoint!

We went with the Pro Moire black too, my builder loves the color. Nothing jumps out as busy. Took me forever to decide too, but happy with our decision. Pictures on Instagram #HillsideHaven

Hello Hippigurl, What's the problem, the rendering looks great! Honestly, it took a second to figure out what was happening with the stone running up from the first to second floor. I think if you removed it from the garage, the statement you're making will stand out more as the stone would just be a (2) Story feature. You could remove it everywhere except the 'tower' and maybe bring it back as column bases instead, with just the dark gray siding at the garage & first floor. Hope that helped. Have fun, -f