“My true passion is buying and selling houses,” Ted Upshaw says, “but in this marketplace that’s hard to do and make a living.”
So the owner of Accountable Roofing and Remodeling in Little Rock does both. The company still buys and resells houses, and the steady work is roofing and general construction. “We flip and we also do residential and commercial construction,” he says. Of the two kinds of construction, he leans toward houses. “We do more residential work and are just more comfortable in that arena.”
He has also settled a question many owners put off: who runs the place after him. Upshaw has one minority partner, a friend named Josh Morrell, and the plan is for Morrell to take over when Upshaw retires.
Morrell is already a familiar name to the company’s customers. A homeowner who hired the company in 2024 credited him, as project manager, with walking her through the whole job and answering every question she brought him. Other reviewers mention him by name as the person who first knocked on the door, inspected the roof and helped with the insurance call.
That insurance work runs through most of what the company does. Its crews meet with the adjuster and help homeowners file storm claims, and the company says most replacement roofs go on in a single day. The team has trained with CertainTeed to earn the shingle maker’s Shingle Master status, and the company was featured on THV11 in a segment on how homeowners can avoid roofing scams. The service area covers Little Rock and nine other central Arkansas cities, Conway and Benton among them.
Upshaw puts the guarantee first. He says Accountable offers a lifetime warranty on shingles and materials, plus a 10-year guarantee on labor and workmanship, which he calls the company’s “10 year leak free guarantee.” The lifetime coverage is the manufacturers’ limited warranty. The company’s own 10 years transfers to the next owner if the house is sold, and it comes with free annual inspections for as long as the homeowner keeps the house. “We stand behind our stuff,” he says.
His own start was in building, not roofing. “I got my general contractor’s license in 1995,” he says. “I’ve been in business ever since.” He spent those years as a home builder and a developer before the work turned to roofing and general construction.
His way of running a crew is plain: show the guys what you expect, and make clear the expectation applies to them as much as to himself. He traces it to home. “Part of it is work ethic I was raised with,” he says, “and part of it’s just treating people as I want to be treated.”
The rest of the plan already has a name in it. “I want to grow the business until I’m ready to retire,” he says, “and then want to turn it over to my partner Josh.”