Mediterranean style roof recoat

So access came first, and it was worked out surface by surface. Ladders where a ladder is the right tool and gets you square to the work. A cherry picker brought in for the runs you cannot reach properly off a ladder — the high gable ends, the sections where the ground falls away underneath you. Harnesses on for the work up on the tiles themselves.

That is not box-ticking. A painter who is braced awkwardly and thinking about his footing is not watching the work, and it shows in the finish long before it shows in an incident report. Getting a person square to the surface, comfortable, with both the pot and the edge in easy reach, is the first thing that has to be true before any of the rest of it matters.

Then the wash. A full clean down to take off the moss, the lichen and the years of grime that sit in the valleys of a profiled tile, because nothing bonds to any of that. On a Mediterranean profile there is a lot more surface hiding in the shape of the tile than a flat roof ever has, and it all has to come clean.

The tiles themselves came next. Anything cracked or broken was repaired before coating rather than after — a damaged tile under a fresh recoat is a leak with a nice finish on it. Then the system: a primer coat to bond to the substrate, followed by two top coats.

Application was split. Edges, junctions and anywhere overspray had no business going were cut in by hand. The open field of the roof was sprayed, which on a profiled tile is not just the quicker option — a sprayed coat carries into the shape of the tile and covers the sides of every barrel evenly, where anything applied by hand leaves the film heavy on the crowns and thin in the valleys.

Precision where it counts, efficiency where it doesn't cost anything.