u/TheRavenOfElijah

I am coming into possession of my grandmother’s house built in the 1920’s. It has original tile, which has been painted (and repainted over the years). The roof appears to be on its last leg and needs replaced.

I would very much like to keep the original look, which would really require having a painted fiber cement roof. Fiber cement roofs seem to be fairly common in Europe, but best I can tell they are totally absent in the United States. I’m not aware of any installed this century and I can’t find any American manufacturers that make fiber cement roof products, although there are many European options.

Do you think I can realistically get a roofer to install one? Is this just ill advised? It’s a shame, at least aesthetically fiber cement looks a lot better than metal/composite faux slate/tile. It also is more readily paintable as far as I can tell.

I am coming into possession of my grandparent’s former house. It has a tile roof that is about ~90 years old and seems to be reaching the end of its life (some fresh water spots can be seen in the attic)

As far as anyone seems to know, and presumably for the entire life of the roof it has been painted. Every few decades it has been repainted (the last guy my grandma got did a very poor job).

This leads me to my question. The house has a *lot* of roof. And the tiles on the dormers are the same as those on the roof (and also painted). With a good paint job, the house looked really really nice. Doing something like asphalt tiles would just not look right; the roof is just a huge part (like 50%) if the facade of the house. I would very much like to just go back with the same thing - square painted tiles on roof and dormer.

Are there any options for new roofing that can be painted? It would 100% just look a lot better. Square tiles that can be painted would be the best; that’s what it currently has.

My next best option would be colored slate, but that would be incredibly expensive and maybe require adding supports for additional weight.

Another option would be inspire slate (which you can get with some color) which is also pretty expensive and will presumably fade and I’m just not sure how reliable that is.