How do you get coloured roof tiles? Pigeons poop all over them and ruin them. The flatter the roof, the more likely that pigeons and other birds will perch. The coloured tiles must be very expensive. I would love to have a white house with green tiles, so pretty, like art deco buildings.
Answer
You paint the roof tiles. What? You must be joking!
Story about roof tile painting in Singapore
I always thought that tiles, like bricks, reflected the colour of the earth. So that orange bricks in London are from the famous red clay of London. Singapore also has red clay. I imagined that the red tiles on rooftops were made from terracotta (fired to make them less porous, and glazed so that rain water ran down the indentations.
Changing Colour of Tiles
So how did I think green tiles became green? If I imagined them being coloured, I would have assumed it was done in the factory, and could not be changed later. But roof tiles, at least the ones in Singapore, are painted in situ (on site - in place). No need to remove the individual tiles and repaint each one.
Health and Safety
If you are a painter, you just run up and down with the paint spray (wearing a white mask like a bandit, over your nose and mouth, like a large tee towel tied around your head under your eyes). Maybe goggles would be a good idea. I am sure they have rules and regulations. Singapore is very hot on signs telling you to take safety precautions on buildings sites, construction, and renovation. I presume they are covered by insurance.
Painting tiles? No, I'm not joking. I saw painting of roof tiles done in Singapore. The renovation team first painted the roof tiles on the three gazebos with white. Then they painted over the white with orange. I should have taken a photo. I'm sorry I didn't race to do it. You'll have to take my word for it.
The painters were a team wearing t-shirts printed with the word Nippon Paint, and had huge drums of Nippon paint and small paint sponges or spreaders on the ends of sticks. The paint spreaders seemed very small but I suppose if they were too big they would be heavy and might drip and could not reach into corners nor cover curved surfaces accurately.
Gazebo
Er - what exactly is a gazebo? The Oxford dictionary installed on my laptop informs me that it is a pavilion or summer house or shed or kiosk. But the ones I saw being painted are open sided areas for sitting by the barbecue near the edge of a swimming pool in many condominiums in Singapore.
Tips
If you need a pinter, approach somebody already working on a house or building. In Singapore you will see the name of the contractor and the emergency phone line. If a building is being renovated, you are likely to see on a nearby notice board the name of the contractor, the price, the specifications of the work, the time schedule for each job and each building within the complex.
If there is not poster on the notice board, each resident is likely to have been sent a notice. (They will also have a letter telling them if any part of the building will be out of use, or if contractors have to gain access to their balcony to repaint it.
Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.
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