I thought the roof tiles would be an easy decision, one that 'may' require an upgrade to the 'premium' range, but confined to a range of colours and styles that would simplify the decision making process. Arghhhh...
Our builder's inclusions are from the Boral traditional or classic range, so I jump on their website and browse through the prestige range. Carbide or Tungsten look pretty good, but will no doubt come at a price. In the meantime my wife collects some samples from the classic range and we soon realise that the colours are not what they appear to be, especially when put on the roof. Our own little theory suggests that the roof colour is the exact opposite to the wall colour, a slight increase in colour on the walls is magnified 10 fold, whilst a slight increase in the roof colour makes 1/10 of a difference.
We started looking at greys or shades of grey and soon realised that most looked the same once on the roof, so we're now looking at black (Boral Ebony or Bristile Charcoal).
Talking to the supervisor he had a good point, house's that have a large roof area visible when entering may justify the upgrades, but a block sloping to the front for example is pointless, as you can barely see the roof.
Driving around and looking at various homes with new roofs another glaringly obvious fault appeared, that any shingle profile roof (flat) shows any small variances in the squareness of the tile and the quality of the workmanship when being layed. This was confirmed by Boral, who said that the installers need to ensure they start with a very square cut shingle tile, otherwise the whole row will be out, the supporting beams obviously need to be aligned and that there are small variances in the manufacturing process resulting in tiles that aren't always perfectly square.
This is where the striata or patterns come into play, they hide the small nuances that one might notice. Our current options seem to be to leave it with the Bristile Classic Charcoal (looks black) which has a 'Shake' profile or upgrade to a Boral Striata Ebony which is a flat profile.
Update - after seeing the Bristile display we think the Classic Charcoal is the way to go. The colour is quite dark, the shape hides small nuances in laying and they're glazed at each end properly.
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