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.