Projects
The site, before it becomes a roof again
Every photograph on this site is an MBS Roofing Work South France job. No stock images, nothing staged — and no caption claiming a location we cannot prove.
A roofer’s gallery nearly always shows the same thing: finished roofs, blue sky, three-quarter view. It is the most flattering angle and the least informative one. A finished covering tells you nothing about what is underneath it, and that is where its life is decided.
So this page is organised in chapters rather than projects: a re-roof from start to finish, two before-and-afters you can check, the logistics nobody photographs, and the craftsman at work on the slope.
The sequence
A re-roof, from stripping to ridge
Nine photographs, in the order the work actually happens: stripping the tiles, the deck laid bare, repairs to the structure, underlay, battens, relaying course by course, the ridge bedded in. Each stage is shown on whichever job documented it best.
It is also most of what you never see of a finished roof: once the tiles are back on, everything done underneath becomes invisible — and that is exactly where the covering’s life is decided.
Proof
Two before-and-afters you can check yourself
A before-and-after is only worth something if both photographs show the same roof. That is rarer than it sounds: two canal-tiled roofs always look alike, and it takes very little to place two unrelated buildings side by side.
Both comparisons below can be checked by eye. In the first, the church tower above the ridge line, the wooded hill and the old roof edge still in place on the right are the same in both frames. In the second it is the green shutters, the timber verge board, right down to the yellow lichen on the same verge tiles.
Drag the handle: the landmarks stay put, only the covering changes. That is what a before-and-after should always allow — to look twice at the same roof, and judge for yourself.
Underlay and battens 
Tiles relaid 
Being fitted 
Finished 
The logistics
The part nobody photographs
No roofer’s website shows this, which is a pity: it is half the job and often half the timescale. A scaffold to be put up in a village street, a crane unloading pallets onto a narrow verge, a skip of old roof timbers to be taken away.
It is also what explains why being local genuinely matters in this trade. None of it happens remotely, and none of it can be made up the next day if the logistics were badly prepared.
The work itself
Somebody is up there
A roof is not repaired from a distance, and it cannot be judged from the ground. These four photographs show the one thing the rest of the site cannot: somebody on the slope, balanced, doing the work.
It is also the simplest answer to the question every owner asks before picking up the phone — who am I handing my roof to.
Services
What these chapters are about
Every photograph on this page belongs to one of these six services.
What a job photograph says, and does not say
- What people assume A handsome roof photo proves good work.
- What actually happens It proves a good visible result. What makes a covering good is underneath: the deck, the underlay, the counter battens, the batten setting-out. Which is why photographs of work IN PROGRESS are worth more than photographs of finished roofs.
- What people assume New, uniform tiles are better.
- What actually happens On an old building, often not. An entirely new covering on a village house is visible from hundreds of metres away. Reusing the sound tiles — slower and more demanding — gives a result that time has already matched to the building.
What to look at in these images
- The alignment of the courses Judged from a distance. Even courses mean battens set out to the gauge, not laid by eye.
- What is under the tiles Underlay, counter battens, battens: that is what decides how long it lasts, and it only shows on an open job.
- The awkward details Ridge, verges, chimney junctions. That is where a roofer is judged, not in the middle of a slope.
- The mix of tiles Old and new together, matched: the sign of sorting, and therefore of time spent.
What these jobs have in common
- Stripping by hand Course by course, sorting tiles into three piles. It is slow, and it is what makes reuse possible.
- The deck repaired board by board We replace what is damaged, not the whole boarding. Sound timber stays put.
- Underlay and counter battens The second barrier, and the air gap that lets the deck breathe between showers.
- Battens set out to the gauge That setting-out gives the courses their headlap and alignment, still visible ten years later.
- The awkward parts last Ridge, flashings, rainwater goods. They sit over everything else, so they come at the end.
Yours next?
Describe what you can see, or what you are thinking of doing. The rest gets decided up on the roof, not in a photo gallery.