metal roofing

Updated 1-8-23

Phil teaching you how to install metal skirting and trim yourself, and maybe in your own business. You can install this on homes, trailers, mobile homes and even some commercial buildings. He covers J-channel, top-front, and how to do your corners.

The material lasts forever and stands up to the punishment. You can order the metal from a metal building supply store, maybe Lowe’s. Lowe’s will cost more. Wiss snipes are the ones I like.

The reason we are doing all these videos is to share Phil’s experience, and teach you how to make your life better. No way Phil can do it all, we love teaching and helping others.

⏱️⏱️Chapters⏱️⏱️
00:00 Alot of questions-Where do I get the metal
01:07 J-channel-if you put it on wood, the wood WILL rot
01:55 How to order and install top front & bottom j-channel
02:55 Want to order hemmed on the top front
03:35 J-channel-why want that shape
04:05 Starting with Top-front
04:40 Steel skirting panels will not bow, usually will shove the j-channel in the dirt
05:00 How to do a Top-front outside corner
07:15 Wiss snipes are the ones he likes
08:00 How to do inside corner top-front
09:25 How to cut around phone and other lines-leave yourself room to lap over
10:50 Top-front doesn’t have to be 2″ but give yourself room
11:30 When ordering, make sure your color is on the outside
11:53 Moving to j-channel-supplies at metal building supply
12:10 Problems with j-channel, how to deal with dips
12:58 Don’t like the gaps
13:14 How to go over blocks and boards
16:30 How to make it really fancy and line up
16:56 Outside corner on j-channel
18:50 Inside corner j-channel
19:25 Showing you how to do your own work, even if you want to start a business doing it

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Hello, folks. There’s been a lot of questions on the other website that I have for mobile home skirting using metal. A lot of questions have been Where do I get the metal? At Lowe’s, this is an opportunity to buy there.

I personally have never bought at Lowe’s because I know the prices are way higher. Lowe’s, Home Depot, Meeks whatever is in your area might have the metal that they use on metal buildings, and in Lowe’s case, they would usually use it for like porch coverings and so on.

But the place where I get it is a metal building supply and you have to order the sizes that you need and on a skirting job, it might start at one end higher, longer on the other side, shorter. So, you might want to calculate.

Don’t buy too much metal that you have to cut off, and a lot of times you have to allow for the fact that you’re cutting at an angle because going down on a hole and come back, OK? On the j-channel, I have had it ask of me, how come we don’t put it on wood that way?

It would not blow out. First of all, I’ve never had this blowout with six Inch Nails every two feet. Second of all, just water alone. No matter if its pressure treated or not, will rot this wood. I promise you it will rot.

More importantly, any time you put wood on the back side of your skirt, that wood will attract carpenter ants, termites. All kinds of bugs, like living in wet, soft wood. So don’t use wood on the bottom of your skirting and don’t do it because it will rot away, and it will be swinging in the air.

But the last video that I showed you guys was using the trim from the original plastic skirting so as to save money. So, this time I’m just going to show you how to order and how to install the top front and then the bottom j-channel.

Both of these are superior again to the plastic, but the plastic lasts a long, long time. So don’t get me wrong, you can definitely use the plastic. It will last a lot longer than the skirting that goes up and down.

Now, if you guys can come a little closer whenever I order the top front, which covers over the metal skirting it has a three-inch front, a one inch back, maybe a two inch up. It can be an inch and a half.

And that way you’ve got a place to put a screw, and this covers over a myriad of up and down that you might have on the top of your skirting might not be able to get exactly straightened. If you notice a profile, it’s also hemmed on the bottom, and you tell them hemmed so that way it’s not a sharp edge and somebody can go along, and anything can rub up against it and cut it. Now that being the shape, that would be your top front. Hold on a second. This would be the bottom j, which the panel sits down in.

This, in this case, is one inch on the front, one inch on the bottom, and then two and a half three to two and a half three inches on the very back. That way, you can slide it hit and then drop-down in.

Believe me, that’s a real advantage to having this higher. And then what you would use is usually use six-inch nails that can cost you 18 to $0.30 a piece, and I put them about every two feet. But we’re going to start with the top front, which is sort of a vinyl skirting term using top front because on a vinyl skirting job you end up with a top back and then the top front slides up into the top back and it covers that. We’re not doing it. We eliminate all that. You don’t need that because you’re screwing your metals to your metal building panels into the house, which they do not bow unless the house is really settling. Usually what it does is it shoves the J-channel down into the dirt, but so we don’t need a top back or top front. We don’t have the dilemmas that plastic has, but here we are trying to figure out what to do about a corner so I might measure.

30 something inches. And that’s where the corner is. Well, first of all, you’re going to lap over every piece is going to be lapped over. So, you go to that measurement and then you come out and you go, oh, well, I’m going to be right there, but I need allow two inch lap on that side or

Underneath over top. Either way. So that’s where I’m going to meet you measure to your mobile home corner. But you need to allow an inch coming out. So that’s going to come out and inch on both sides.

Mind you, that profiles an inch right there. So, you allow some lap and you got that. No, you don’t have to be super skilled. So, you market it that good old speed square that everybody likes. There’s your mark. You mark it down here and you mark it right here, and you mark it like so. Now, first thing I do since I marked it down here, if I don’t cut it right here, it has a tendency to bend where it wants to. So, what I do first, just to keep it straight in my head is I’m mark.

I cut here and I cut up here. Now this. Is a one inch. So, what you can do is you measure over an inch both sides in this case, I can just almost get my heart. And then I go from that inch over to that Mark, remember at Mark here lines up with that one and this one like that. Well, a lot of times it’s hard to get to. So, you can see how it’s trying to buckle, take and go like. So, open it up and get your snips to cut right there and fold it back.

See how that closed up. That would be an outside corner. And I did that all freehand of that yet again. There’s a lot of issues with trying to use a left-handed, which would be a green handled pair of snips or a right handed.
You could figure out which one always use a straight I like Wiss W-I-S-S, because they cut further back. I started in the eighties doing metal stud and I used Sears. I used every kind of snips in. The Wiss has been the best for spring’s lasting, jaw staying sharp, and cutting deep, so that actually is not pretty.

Corner, as I would like it to be, but it still works. Oh, then, if you’re doing an inside corner. An inside corner is a little different. Personally, I don’t really care to have, again you might want to use the speed square to make it straight and square, but I really don’t like to do that against that and then leave this right here open. So, what I usually do is I allow for that one inch right here. Cut out right here and go over the top so I can almost guess it by heart, but you can measure it exactly whatever that your depth you make it here at.

And that sits over that now it could be an open corner a little bit. It could be an opposite corner such as that. So that would be how I would do it now. So quite often you run into areas where you have to cut around a phone line that’s coming up through what you can do is measure where it is. Again, leave yourself a little room to lap over and forgive yourself a little bit. Say, if it’s that wide, all you got to do is, do you like that? And if you don’t like that area exposed, you can put a little piece back in there behind it or hide it.

But your wire would be coming up through and it could be smaller than that. It could be right on down to a little tiny wire area. Okay. What I have done with people that are really fussy, of course, I charge extra for people that are extra fussy, but you drill a hole the exact size of that wire right there. Then you cut down to it, then you open it up and then you push it back. You can do that, too. It usually ends up being difficult. Now sometimes you can also square down and cut straight through that.

And guess what? You can make that area really, really tight. So, that top front doesn’t have to be as high right here. This is two inches. I made it for a specific type of skirting area.

I want to make sure I had plenty of area of the grab. But you can use it inch and a half or so. But the biggest thing is, remember that you want to have lap. That’s really pretty easy, but you can pop a line, make it then on straight.

Make sure you get that room that you need at the top. So there is your top front. I order it and usually when I tell them I want a three inch, a one inch and then an inch and a half or two inch here.

The color is on the outside. You have to tell them its color on the outside. If you say, if you don’t say it, then there and you have to say hemmed. If you don’t say it, you’re going to end up with the color on the inside.

So, this is what you want to color outside. Now we can move to j-channel, which is more work, way more work. The j-channel is hidden to by the grass, by the dirt. So on, so on. Again, you get this set of metal building.

Supply issues end up being What do I do when I got to go over certain things like down into a dip? Well, we measure where your dip is, that you cut it bottom and then you cut it again, where it raises back up and ends up being a dip so it can be any kind of angle.

It can be any kind of depth, but it can. It can. You can get it down if you want to break it down and get down to little tiny areas. Try to go over every little rock. It can get really strange what you can do.

Now I again don’t like these gaps. So, what I usually do is cut it, lay it inside, down on the ground. The dirt’s going to be up against the grass is going to be up against it. What’s going to happen now?

Sometimes you go over blocks, sometimes you go over two bys, sometimes you go over four bys. We’ll do a little bit of that. Now what you can do if you don’t feel confident enough is you can cut it up to that and then you can go around it with little pieces.

And that’s really a journey. Generally, what I do is I take and measure up to it. Again, I allow area to lap over and then I cut like so and then if I need to put in a top piece, usually, I let it go a little bit longer.

Let’s do that a little longer. Using a tape measure is a good thing, but let’s just do it longer and see that that other piece that you’re going to put in there, ends up being that high. So, we end up doing this.

This can sit inside and then I need to take a pencil and mark the bottom of that, the way I know how far I need to cut it out to see that mark. And then I cut both sides to that mark and then fold it down.

You don’t like it a little bit. Say it’s doing that right there that can be cut off, sticking up because of the other piece of right there, you could get off a lot lower down. Well, keeps on sticking out. Now, sometimes when you get into really, really fancy working if you got to make this line up perfectly.

And if you want to, you can do like they do ceiling grid and ridge cap. Not ridge cap, but I like on shingle roofs. We can cut that right smack in the middle right across, and it looks like you did a perfect job.

So, there you go. That would be how you get over a two by four, or a four by four, or block. Then comes the issue of outside corners. First of all, you’re leveling down from the outside of your mobile home.

And then you take you can take your pencil and make a mark in the dirt. Just moved the dirt. And that is the backside. When you’re leveling down, that’s your backside. So, you got allow an inch to come out, so you make your mark on the bottom like so and then you make your mark over here and it goes like so and you get ready to make your outside corner you measured. Now again, you can forgive yourself. You don’t got to be exact. You want a lap over into the other one. Anyway, so say we’re going to break into the middle of this and I know it’s going to be right there.

My measurement is right there to the outside. And I made my mark right there again, just like I did on that top front on the inside corner. It’s the same thing. Except I don’t really, really want to do is cut right at the top, and then I cut an inch over to this way, it’ll go an inch this way and I aim toward that center. And then I cut it. Guess what I just dropped it. Inside corner. Toda. Or an outside court? That’s really what that’s an outside corner. So, then you’ve got an inside corner quite a bit simpler. All you got to do for an inside corner is make your mark.

Cut it all the way across the bottom. Probably would have helped if I cut this one. To that hem, there is an inside corner. This doesn’t matter back here because it’s going to be covered up with metal, you know, basically what I’m doing is showing you guys how to do your own work, uh, even if you want to have your own little business of doing it. And it’s really not it. You have to build your own reputation like I have in this area. 23 years to build your reputation for quality, do what you say you’re going to do.

And the fact that I can’t do everything in this whole great bigger world we live in. That means you guys can do it instead of just me and at my age. I love teaching. I have always love teaching no matter how.

Sometimes it’s kind of fun because it’s funny. Somebody gets awkward and you can laugh about it. But really, this the things that I teach you like, forgive yourself to allow some movement because you’re lapping over, like with the j-channel you’re laying over.

You can lay over a foot if you want to, but you can forgive yourself. Don’t be. Don’t worry about being perfect this. This scenario is not something that requires. So, I hope you guys understand what I’m trying to do is share with you some 25 years of experience, maybe more.

I try to forget how old I am and let you guys grow with it. And if you understand that, then I intend to sort of be like Will Rogers. I try to find the glass half full instead of half empty.

And I try to find good in everyone. So I hope that these videos that I make your life a little bit easier. Understanding how to do things, then nobody showed me I. I was the first one in this area to do this, and I was the first one to do metal roofs actually in this area.

I started doing them down in Austin, so that’ll be another discussion. But I don’t mind sharing these things, and I encourage you guys to check out all the other videos I have on how to repair mobile homes and ones that I have coming up.

If you wish to subscribe. But particularly learn, that’s the whole idea for me. Doing this is so you can learn how to do it yourself. Thank you.