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Some Projects Stay With You

Tue, 25 Aug 2026 11:27:42 GMT

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Some projects stay with you.

People come to Amaterra Winery for many reasons. The views over Portland's West Hills. The architecture perched among the trees. A gravity-flow winery and restaurant designed to feel both elevated and deeply connected to its surroundings — the kind of place that has become a destination.

Most visitors experience Amaterra as a whole. The setting. The architecture. The light through the windows at the end of an afternoon. The views of the valley.

Very few of them think about the roof.

Which is exactly as it should be.

The project

Amaterra Winery opened in May of 2021 as a state-of-the-art gravity-flow winery in Portland's West Hills. The building itself is a piece of architecture, and its roofline has become part of the brand's identity — visible on every bottle label.

It is also one of the most complex roofs we have built.

Twenty-plus separate roof planes. A total footprint of 27,000 square feet. Custom-fabricated details throughout. Constructed between the fall of 2020 and the spring of 2021, through a Portland winter with sustained winds of 30 to 40 miles per hour, gusts to 70, snow and ice events that closed off roof access for entire days, and the site protocols of a global pandemic.

What the roof required

Most roofs are assembled from standard parts. This one could not be.

Almost every detail that makes Amaterra's roof actually work was fabricated in our shop in Beaverton, Oregon. The custom flashings that hold long clean lines without splices. The perimeter edges built to match specific fascia conditions. The gutters shaped to the actual roofline. And the drainage details, including soldered stainless steel crickets — custom water diverters formed by hand to each valley intersection, pipe-locked and soldered so that water moves cleanly across spans wider than any manufactured product could handle.

At the eave overhangs, where the insulation stepped down, precision flashing had to shape itself to the transition. Every piece was measured, formed, and set to a tolerance that could not be adjusted in the field.

None of this shows up in the finished building. That is the point. When the details are done right, all a visitor notices is a beautiful roof.

Built to the roof. Not adapted afterward. That is how we work.

The way we build

On a project like this, the work is rarely about avoiding challenges. It is about knowing how to move through them.

Our approach has always been the same. Understand what is needed. Solve the next problem in front of you. Keep the work moving. When roof conditions changed, we adjusted the schedule. When materials had to remain staged, we secured them for the conditions. When coordination challenges arose, we worked through them and kept momentum on the project.

The crew that built Amaterra brought decades of sheet metal experience to the project. People who have spent years solving difficult roof geometry, custom fabrication challenges, and conditions that rarely go exactly as planned.

A crew like that does not simply install a roof. They read it.

They know where transitions will become difficult. Where water management will require something custom. Where exposure conditions will change how a detail should be built. That kind of judgment only comes from experience.

And some projects stay with you.

What the roof became

Today, Amaterra is part of Portland's landscape. People visit for the wine, the architecture, and the views.

For the people who built the roof, it means something else. It reminds them of winter mornings, complicated geometry, custom fabrication, and months spent solving one challenge after another.

Years later, crew members still bring friends and family to Amaterra and point toward the roof.

Not because it was easy.

Because it was difficult.

Because it required custom fabrication, careful coordination, and countless decisions no visitor will ever see.

Because projects like this remind us why we do the work in the first place.

Good sheet metal work does more than keep water out. It becomes part of the building itself.

Project partners: Waterleaf (waterleaf.com) — architect · Emerick Construction Company — general contractor · Amaterra Winery (amaterrawines.com)

Why a Chimney Cap Should Be Built for the Chimney It Sits On

Tue, 25 Aug 2026 11:13:30 GMT

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Off-the-shelf chimney caps are built for a chimney that does not actually exist.

They are designed to fit a category — a typical width, a typical pitch, a standard dimension — not the specific chimney sitting on the specific roof. And on homes with custom masonry, unusual proportions, or architectural details that fall outside standard catalog dimensions, "close enough" tends to show up in the way the cap fits, weathers, and ages over time.

The problem is rarely how the cap looks the day it is installed.

It is how the cap performs five, ten, or twenty years later under the wind, water, and temperature cycling the structure actually faces.

That is where custom fabrication changes the result.

What Custom Chimney Cap Fabrication Looks Like

The chimney comes first. The cap is built to match.

That is the order of operations on a custom chimney cap from TT&L Sheet Metal. Measure the structure. Fabricate to those dimensions in the shop. Install the finished piece on the same house it was built for.

Three things happen in that sequence that off-the-shelf caps cannot offer.

The measurements are real.

A custom cap is measured on the chimney it is going to live on — not estimated from a category. Width, pitch, profile, surrounding architectural detail. Everything that affects fit gets captured at the source.

The fabrication is matched to the structure.

The piece is built to those dimensions, in the material the project calls for, with the reinforcement and fastening suited to the conditions the structure will face. A coastal home faces different exposure than a sheltered one. A ridge home faces different conditions than one tucked behind trees.

Custom fabrication can account for that.

Standard products cannot.

And the install does not require a hand-off. TT&L fabricates and installs the cap with the same team. The people putting the cap on the roof are the same people who measured the chimney and built the piece.

That continuity matters more than it sounds.

A custom cap fabricated in one shop and installed by a separate contractor — who never saw the chimney, never measured it, and never participated in the fabrication — loses part of what makes custom work valuable in the first place.

The Skyline Project

A recent project in Portland's Skyline area shows what this looks like in practice.

The homeowner was replacing a copper chimney cap that had begun tearing apart under wind exposure.

From the ground, the original cap looked finished: copper, formed, installed.

From the inside, it told a different story.

Bolt-and-nut connections had begun working loose under cyclical wind loading. The lid lacked internal reinforcement to stiffen the assembly. The design simply could not hold up to the conditions on that ridge over time.

TT&L measured the existing chimney, fabricated the replacement to spec, and handled the install.

The new cap was built for the conditions it had to survive.

Copper on top for finish and architectural character — chosen because the homeowner wanted the look, and because copper develops a patina that ages with the house rather than against it.

Stainless steel reinforcement underneath to stiffen the lid. A copper top alone, on a windy ridge, eventually flexes. Reinforcement keeps the assembly rigid where it needs to be.

Aircraft-grade stainless steel rivets to hold the assembly together. Standard screws and bolt connections tend to loosen over time under cyclical wind loading. Rivets do not.

That is why they were the right fastening system for this exposure.

A finished piece built for the actual chimney. Measured on-site. Fabricated to spec. Installed by the same team that built it.

Most of those details are not visible from the ground.

They are the reason the cap is built to last.

What Custom Fabrication Is Supposed to Deliver

Custom fabrication is not about adding cost to a project for the sake of it.

It is about building a piece that performs in the conditions it actually has to face — the structure, the exposure, the finish expectations, and the weather the assembly will live under for decades.

When custom fabrication is done well, it produces a few clear results:

• a tighter fit on the structure

• better weather protection because the geometry is right

• longer-lasting finishes because the materials were chosen intentionally

• a finished piece that looks like it belongs on the house rather than added afterward

• reinforcement, fastening, and material thickness selected for the conditions the piece will actually face

None of these are dramatic.

None of them are the details most people notice on installation day.

They are what make the cap still doing its job twenty years later.

If it can be made from sheet metal, TT&L can build it — measured, fabricated, and installed locally, or shipped anywhere in the U.S.

Why TT&L Builds Chimney Caps This Way

TT&L Sheet Metal has been fabricating custom architectural sheet metal in the Pacific Northwest since 1978.

Three generations. One shop. The same standards across decades of work.

Chimney caps are one part of what runs through the shop — alongside custom flashing, sill pans, panels, gutters, and one-off architectural fabrication for contractors, builders, and homeowners across the region.

But the chimney cap work follows the same rule the rest of the shop runs on:

Build the piece for the actual condition, in the right material, with the right details, and install it like it matters.

The reason a chimney cap can do its job for decades is everything built into it before it ever reaches the roof.

One-off custom pieces or large production runs.

Standard Products Were Never Designed for Houses Like These

Wed, 03 Jun 2026 10:25:03 GMT

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Older homes rarely give you standard conditions.

Window openings vary from one room to the next. Some heads are curved. Walls have shifted. Some details predate modern flashing systems.

For contractors working on older Portland homes, those conditions are not unusual. They are the job.

Exactly why custom fabrication shops exist.

Because these conditions cannot be solved with stock material trimmed in the field. The opening is different. The geometry is different. The water-management detail is different. The piece needs to be built for the actual condition, not adapted to fit.

Part of why A Cut Above Exteriors has worked with TT&L for 20+ years.

TT&L fabricates custom sill pans, radius head flashing, soldered details, and made-to-spec pieces where standard products fall short.

Built to the actual opening.

WHY IT MATTERS

These pieces do more than finish the install.

A sill pan directs water out before it reaches framing. Head flashing prevents water from sitting above the window and working into the structure.

On older homes, small failures become expensive ones.

Many of the details that prevent those failures depend on custom fabrication:

Radius flashing for curved openings
Soldered corners
Continuous sill pans
Custom dimensions built for non-standard conditions
Formed pieces that simply do not exist in standard catalogs

Custom is normal here.

WHY CONTRACTORS USE A SHOP LIKE TT&L

A contractor encounters the condition in the field.

The shop solves it.

Sometimes that means a one-off piece for a difficult opening. Sometimes it means long continuous lengths standard suppliers do not carry. Sometimes it means production runs to exact specs, not forcing crews to modify stock on-site.

The advantage is not just getting metal.

It is working with a shop that understands:

How the fabricated piece will actually be installed
How water moves around the opening
What conditions fail over time
How curved geometry behaves during forming
What needs to happen upstream so the work runs cleaner downstream

That combination of capability and field awareness keeps shop relationships strong.

Especially on specialized work.

IF YOU CAN DREAM IT, WE CAN BUILD IT

TT&L fabricates:

Custom flashing
Sill pans
Radius head flashing
Chimney caps
Custom profiles
Gutters
Long-length fabrication up to 26 feet
One-off custom pieces
Large production runs

The shop works in stainless steel, aluminum, copper, zinc, painted steel, ACM, HPL, and fiber cement.

Some work depends on production capability. Some depends on layout skill, hand-forming, and experience.

Both matter.

When conditions are custom, details are exposed, and water management matters, fabrication is not just production.

It is part of getting the job right.

One-off custom pieces or large production runs. If it can be made from sheet metal, TT&L can build it. Pickup in Beaverton or shipped anywhere in the U.S.