Closing In 2 Old Skylights on a Staten Island Roof

Here's a job that a lot of homeowners don't think about until they're dealing with a leak - old skylights that have simply run their course. On this Staten Island roof, we had two aging skylights that weren't worth repairing. The frames were worn, the seals were compromised, and keeping them around meant keeping the leak risk alive. The right call was to close them in completely.

Not every skylight is worth saving. Sometimes the unit is so old that repair after repair is just patching a problem that's going to come back. When that's the situation, removing the skylight and closing in the opening with properly matched shingles is a cleaner, smarter fix. It eliminates a chronic weak point in the roof and simplifies things going forward.

What we ended up with is a clean, uniform shingle surface where those two skylights used to sit. No awkward patches, no mismatched materials. The shingles run edge to edge, blending right in with the rest of the roof. That's the standard we hold ourselves to - the finished result should look like nothing was ever there.

Skylight removal jobs like this one are more common than people realize, especially on older Staten Island homes where the original skylights are decades old. If you've got a feature on your roof that's been giving you trouble season after season, closing it in might be exactly what your roof needs to stay problem-free long term.