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.
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