Using stucco to refinish the exterior of your house: part 2 preparing the exterior

In the previous blog I described the stucco job that was done on the garage for the house and mentioned the reason I am going to stucco the whole house.  To stucco the house with a finish coat over paint it is necessary to prepare the surface well so that the stucco lasts a long time and doesn't fall off.

To prepare the house it is necessary to get rid of the loose paint / dirt / mold / etc. and etch the surface.  To do this I bought a Dewalt pressure washer at Home Depot.  It is 3400 psi. and it is phenomenal!  The Honda engine  usually starts on the first pull.  A good video from a very experienced stucco installer can be found at  this link.
 

 

When using it I have found that my house has three coats of paint.  Considering that it is built in 1962 and it is 55 years old that seems a little sparse.   The last paint job was done by me and I did a shitty job.  I never prepared the surface and the white paint has been peeling ever since.  The pressure washer takes off that paint layer off easily.  The second white layer of paint is stuck on pretty good but in some places it came off and exposed the original tan paint layer.   Whatever they did for the third tan layer is amazing because it has only come off to expose  the concrete in rare instances.

Here is a picture of the east side after pressure washing only once where the top paint layer has been completely removed.

 

The pressure washer takes off all the moth / worm cocoons too.  They are pretty stubborn and sometimes the nozzle of the pressure washer has to be pointed directly at it up close in order for it to come off.  Below is a picture of the worm / moth cocoons which make the house look hairy.

Since I have a two story house,  I decided to buy a scaffold.  I bought the scaffold at Northern Tool.  The two story version was not in the store but was on sale for $100 off so if I wanted it I had to order it online and wait 4 weeks to get it.  Not good!  However they had all the pieces in the store sold separately so I bought them all to make the complete two story scaffold.  The salesman asked his boss if I could get the $100 discount and the manager said yes.  This made me a happy camper.  The scaffold is shown below.

 

Since I really wanted to get the stucco done where the paver driveway would be installed so there would be no chance of ruining the pavers, I pressure washed the front twice and most of the sides of the house but left the back for later.  This way I could speed up the stucco process where it is needed most.

Next I thought about repairing the large cracks in the stucco but not all of them.  Stucco cracks and so I decided not to fuss too much.  For reference I found this video and this video on crack repair.  Also this is interesting link on the effects of repairing a maintenance free stucco finish crack.

My approach is to use elastopatch found at this link.  They also make a textured variety found at this link but I did not use that.  Since I am stuccoing over the patched crack I dont have to worry about the different coloring due to rain.   Is this the right way to go?  I don't know maybe Kirk knows.

Here is picture of  a crack that I spent some time etching with the pressure washer on the side of the house.

I'm not sure I'm going to repair any cracks before I start stuccoing the front of the house.  There are really no large cracks that I'll be stuccoing over right away.  Whenever, I get around to repairing a crack I will blog about it.

Finally, I worked on covering the windows with black 6 mil plastic.   To hold the plastic on I use poly tape.  This tape is not supposed to leave a residue unless you leave it on for a whole month.  Also I made sure to use a brand new blade in my knife. The video for how to do this is here

 
  


That's all for now.  Next blog


Happy building,

The Dr.

Using stucco to refinish the exterior of your house: part 1 thoughts about colored stucco

In my previous blog I had mentioned that I had purchased paver's for my driveway but unfortunately it will take 6 to 10 weeks to get them.  So that means lots of down time.  To fill the down time I have decided to do the next necessary thing for my house.  To refinish the exterior.

The exterior which is sponge finished painted stucco has a lot of blemishes.   It has paint that is pealing.  It has depressions where the old shutters used to be.  It has humps where the cracks were repaired.  It has cracks some of which are in the classic stair step pattern  One crack I discovered goes vertically from the ground all the way to the top of the two story house.  Finally there are little moth cocoons all over the house and it almost looks like the house has hair.

Anyway, I looked into different ways of texturing my house.  One time a long time ago a salesman came to my house and gave me an estimate for what might have been tex cote. Not sure what it was, I don't remember.   But the advantage of the system he was offering was that it never had to be painted, was maintenance free and it didn't crack.  It might have to be cleaned by pressure washing it once in awhile.  I think sears can do a similar installation.

Anyway,  his quote was $25000 to do the whole house which is about 2500 sq ft..  When he left I shook his hand and watched him drive off in his $80000 Tesla.   I guess I'm in the wrong business!  Anyway, when you get an estimate and the guy comes driving up in a expensive car and talks about his yacht or vacations to Tahiti its a red flag.  That means your probably going to pay top dollar and be funding his life of luxury.

I haven't really found anything for texturing my house besides stucco.  There just doesn't seem to be a lot of options and I'm tired of searching the internet.  So stucco it is.

When I got my garage stuccoed by professionals I got a number of estimates.  There was a lot of push back from the contractors because I wanted to do what my dad suggested....get colored (white) stucco on my house.  They just want it to be brown stucco and then I would have to paint it.   But dad said that they used to put on color stucco and not paint the houses.  Yet I kept hearing from the contractors that this is not what is done today.   So I ended up finding someone who would do the colored stucco and he hesitantly he did it.  He asked if I was sure that I wanted to do it and he kept indicating that I would have to put on a sealer on it anyway to keep the water out especially in the areas where stucco was going on wood so I might as well just paint it.  And brown stucco is cheaper he pointed out. 

I don't know if any of this push back is legitimate or if it is a ploy to get painters in on the job.  Maybe it is legitimate.  But I didn't listen and after about a year with having done nothing to my colored stucco job, I am going to proceed on with the idea for the whole house and I'm going to do it myself.   I will not paint it.

Since I have not blogged about the stucco job the professionals  did on the garage I will touch briefly on what they did.

I started out with cinder block.  The first step was to put tar paper over the wood areas to serve as a moisture barrier.  The wood parts include the gable end, the porch roof, the header and column.  To do this quickly I used a hammer stapler found at this link to attach the tar paper.  This is what the stucco guy wanted me to do to get the house ready for the stucco.

 

After this was done the Stucco guy went at it and put wire lath on with a nail gun.

 

 

The next step the stucco guy put on a scratch coat which is a base coat.

 

  

Then another base coat is added.

 

And then the white stucco finish coat was put on.  Interestingly enough, when the white stucco went on over the brown stucco the brown stucco showed through.  You can see this in the pic below.

 

But it whitened up over time as the stucco guy said it would.  It still has a slight brown tint or off white color though which is nice.

 

I like the result of the finish on the garage and intend to extend it myself to the rest of the house.  The cost of the job was $2620 for just the garage portion and porch.  An estimate fot the rest of the house was in the $10000 range.

Anyway, a good reference for stucco questions is the Portland cement association website.  The FAQs are at this link   They talk about painting stucco under the Aesthetics section, and have written the following:

"Stucco can be painted. Portland cement-based paints are very compatible with stucco because they are made of the same material. These paints should be scrubbed into the surface and fully cured. Alternatively, you could consider a colored stucco finish. These finish coats are often made with white cement and pigments, providing the widest range of colors. Premixed materials are color matched from batch to batch and are most consistent.

Additionally, the fact that you are placing a finish coat with a nominal thickness of 1/8 inch instead of a paint layer usually gives more assurance of complete coverage. It is possible to paint with other types of paint, though these are usually not as long lasting as cement-based paint. Acrylic paints are long lasting and durable but change the permeability of the stucco (make it non-breathable) which in some climates may have adverse effects on the long-term performance of the system." 

The adverse effects mentioned above might have to do with what is mentioned  in this link.  It says that the paint is not breathable and water on the ground will seep up into the stucco wall where it will be trapped behind the paint and cause mold.   

Having just uncovered the above info when writing this blog I am glad I did not do anything to my freshly stuccoed garage.

In the next blog I will discuss the preparation of the house exterior for stucco.

Happy Building.

The Dr.

How to install your own paver driveway: part 4 ordering the pavers

In the last blog I discussed paver selection.  As was mentioned there are a lot of factors to consider when selecting pavers like roof color, house color, paver color, paver size, paver pattern and surrounding landscaping color.  all these factors can bog down the decision making process or if they are not considered the end result may be sub par.  One thing in my favor is that I am the only one making the decision and therefore it is less complicated.

So initially I was set on a white / tan paver, but after considering what color my house would be I realized there would be too much similar light colors and I needed some contrasting colors.  I have decided that my house color will be a shade of white with teal paint on the doors, window frames and maybe the gable ends.  Its kind of what the house color scheme has been for a long time but it will be slightly different coloring.

For pavers, I decided on the Abacoa color pattern  which is a red, charcoal, tan mix.  To settle on this color I made a second trip to Coastal an old castle company in Orlando (link). and looked at their in ground paver display.  This time instead of looking for light white tan pavers I looked for darker pavers and found the pavers pictured below

In the picture brick pavers are used but I'm purchasing a larger paver known as Appian Stone.  I tried going even larger by purchasing Appian Grande link but it was not available and I think it has become a legacy paver.    In the very bottom of the picture is different colored Appian stone.  The Appian stone is a two paver system with pavers of dimensions 6" x 6" and 6" x 9".  The reason I wanted the Grande is because I thought that I might want to roll a jack on the driveway and this would offer less resistance.  Also tiles in housing have trended to bigger sizes and I wonder if the same trend will happen with pavers but maybe not.  Anyway Appian Stone it is.  Here is link where someone used Abocoa Appian Stone for a pool deck.

Additionally, I like the charcoal colored paver border in the picture and I am going to attempt that as well.

I calculated that I need 804 Sq Ft of pavers and about 135 feet of border.  It is recommended that when ordering, an extra  10% to 15% is added on to account for the pavers that are cut.  That comes out to be 9 pallets of Appian Stone and 1 Pallet of the black brick where a pallet is 103 square feet.  I'm not to worried about running out since the small pad for the garbage cans can be adjusted in size depending on what I have left over.


To get the best price, I called a local installer that sells the pavers and Old castle in Orlando.  The local installer had paver left overs for sale but was not a dealer of pavers so no dice.  Old Castle of Orlando would sell everything to me for $2696.

However, I had another trick up my sleeve.  I learned this when shopping for cedar for my cedar covered porch project discussed in this link.  I called Lowe's.  Now Lowe's does not have these pavers in their store or online but they do have a different offering of Belgard pavers.  To get stuff from Lowe's that is not their standard offering you have to call their pro desk.

My first call to the pro desk resulted in no one answering.  My second resulted in the statement "we don't have Belgard as a supplier."  But after about an hour I thought to myself, wait a minute they have Belgard pavers in the store.  I got out my red bullshit flag and threw it on the ground.  In my third call, I challenged their statement and then educated the staff about the pavers in their store.  They then wanted to transfer me to the lawn and garden store to talk with them.  I said no I'm not talking with them they wont be able to help me and then I told them my story on how I got some really nice cedar through the pro desk and I would like them to find out if it is possible to get the paver's from the Lowes as well.

Turns out they could get them, from old castle for a slight higher cost per square foot but a much lower delivery cost.  But when I asked for the QSP discount the price cam out to be $2345.  Adding on the 1% for the cash rewards credit card I used resulted in $375 savings or more than one pallet for free.   Nice!

Unfortunately, I have to wait 6 to 10 weeks for Belgard to make the pavers.  This might have something to do with the non standard color causing them not to be in stock.

Since I now have down time other house projects are now in focus.  I will discuss what mammoth project I have just started in my next blog.  For the continuation of the paver driveway blog see this link

Happy Building,

The Dr.