John Wood has a degree in English from Virginia Tech. He connects it to the last thing that happens on a Roof Puppy job.
“I think it’s important to be able to communicate well and effectively with people,” Wood says. For his crews, that means a walkthrough once the work is finished. “I encourage the workers to do walkthroughs with the homeowners when they’re done as well, to make sure everyone’s on the same page,” he says. The walkthrough also confirms that the homeowner is happy with the work. If something about how a job turned out puzzles them, he says, “we can either explain it or address it.”
The same thinking covers the days that go sideways. Wood doesn’t promise a perfect schedule. Cars break down, he says, and calendars get crossed. “Things happen, but we try to communicate those things to homeowners when they do happen.”
One homeowner’s dog had torn up a section of vinyl siding on her house. She wrote afterward that Wood answered her message quickly and kept her informed throughout the repair.
Roof Puppy, based in Raleigh, handles most of a house’s exterior: roofs, siding, windows, gutters, decks and porches. The work is mostly residential, with a commercial job every now and again. The company lists James Hardie and vinyl among its siding materials and builds decks from composite or pressure-treated lumber. Drives to jobs typically run 20 or 30 minutes, and the service area includes Cary, Durham, Chapel Hill, Apex, Morrisville and Garner.
All of the roofing goes to one crew. “I’ve got a crew that I’ve stuck with,” Wood says, and that crew does all of his roof installs. Siding and window projects get what he calls a very hands-on approach. On roofs, he offers a 50-year warranty through Atlas’s Signature Select package.
Wood got into the business knocking doors for a national roofing brand. Along the way he picked up other services and learned other trades, and eventually he started his own company. He describes it as a small local business where the owner is involved in the decisions, and he tries to lead the crews by example.
He wants to keep growing it. He once thought about selling Roof Puppy. Now he pictures building it until running it is hands-off for him. In that version, he says, “I’ve got people that I trust making the decisions for me.”