Like the Highlander® NEX® AR roofing shingles that now cover this new home build in Henderson, Texas, there’s a lot more to the story than meets the eye. On the surface, the Midnight Black shingles that adorn the home look destined to start trending in your social feed. Yet, Chris and Rosemary Cormican’s family home project has had a challenging path and took a lot of local support and generosity get this roof and home build to where it is today.

Early last year, the couple embarked on the enormous task of building a new home in the country. The intent was for the home to serve as ‘a sanctuary’ for Chris, who suffers from injuries inflicted during a tour in Iraq with the Army as they told TV station CBS19. The dream home project started in the spring as the foundation and framing went up, then quickly became a nightmare. The work suddenly came to a stop as the contractor demanded additional payments for the project. Their litany of half-truths ranged from pre-ordering material and storing it in warehouses to excessive fees and labor costs. The Cormicans, aiming to finance the project themselves, dug deep into their nest egg and life savings to spend a total of $395,000 with the contractor – who promptly disappeared.

“They literally took money from our life savings and they essentially walked with it,” said Chris in August 2021.

When news of their story broke, it did not sit well with Dean Mize, project manager for Redline Roofing. Mize, along with several other reputable contractors in the area, volunteered their services and worked with suppliers to bring the Cormican’s home to completion. As seen in the video below, Malarkey’s own Zach Tressati, Sales Representative for Northern and Eastern Texas, coordinated a shingle donation through the nearby Tyler, Texas branch of wholesale distributor, ABC Supply. By June 2022, the new home build was now under a Malarkey roof and one major step closer to completion.

“We really wanted to thank everybody,” said Rosemary to CBS19 this summer. “This house is already, it’s much different than any other home because literally it is built with the hands of volunteers. There’s something amazing about that.”

The Cormicans currently have a GoFundMe page set up for donations to help them finish their home.

Highlander® NEX® AR roofing shingles

Designed in the popular architectural style, and made with our industry-leading NEX® Rubberized Asphalt, Highlander® NEX® AR (algae resistant) shingles deliver all-weather resilience, a Class 2 hail impact rating, and include granules that help clean the air of emission pollutants and reduce algae streaks.

In a place like Texas, where high humidity is a common occurrence, unsightly staining in the form of black streaks can manifest in as few as three years after installation, and they only get worse with time. Shingles made with 3M™ Copper Granules, which blend inconspicuously into a shingle’s color, are uniformly distributed on the shingle’s surface, and release copper ions which inhibit algae growth, preventing it from getting started in the first place.