Turns out that was wrong. I guess the color chart can be misleading. On the garage the color is an off white and I'm not sure if this is because the white finish coat is so thin that the grey coat under it is showing through (or maybe the sponging for the sponge finish mixed the two coats together) or its actually colored.
In any I case I stuccoed the entire front of the house, about 750 square feet, during the weekend with white finish coat. The color is extremely white and I like it. I even like the texture better than the sponge float texture the professionals had done on the garage. Quite amazing since I had no stucco experience when I started and I had no help at all applying the stucco.
What made this possible is the texture sprayer that I used. It essentially reduces stuccoing to an easy spraying process. I was considering sponge floating the texture spray on the house but glad I didn't because it would have taken so long and the result was not as good as the texture sprayer result,
Before I started I did a little more wall prep. The main column on the porch had a large crack in it. I decided to mend it using elastopatch This material should be used if your going to paint over it or in my case stucco over it. This is because it is different color then stucco and even it isn't, when the stucco gets wet it will show.
First, I ran an angle grinder down the crack. Unfortunately I could not find my masonry blade but the metal cutting blade did the job with some coaxing. The I filled the crack with elastopatch. Then I knifed away the excess. And finally I dabbed it with a sponge float and wet rag to get back the original texture.
I only did one fill with the elastopatch and I recommend two, since it contracts and leaves a concave channel in the crack.
Other preparation included covering the garage door, the front door and porch up with plastic. For the roof I found some old tar paper and put that down. Plastic is too slippery for the roof. The tar paper worked well.
After that I rolled some blue bonding agent on the house. The bonding agent requires 2 hours to be ready for stuccoing. It is nice that it is blue since I could tell where I missed a spot very easily. Unfortunately it is only good for 24 hours and since my stuccoing spanned two days I had to apply some more the second day to be sure that it would work. The end result is a blue smurf house shown below.
I have watched YouTube videos by kirk the stucco expert and he recommends diluting the bonding agent for the finish coat otherwise it will spider check which means it will crack a lot. Since he uses a different bonding agent, I have no experience with the bonding agent I bought and the bonding agent says do not dilute I put it on full strength. So I will see if I get spider checking as reported by kirk.
Leading up to the stuccoing process, I perfected the texture spraying process by practicing on plywood. First, I figured out the amount of water needed to get the stucco to run through the funnel provided by the texture sprayer manufacturer. It is precisely 6" of water in a Lowe's 5 gallon bucket per one 80lb bag of white finish coat stucco. I marked the bucket and made a level spot on the ground so I would get a consistent amount of water.
This amount of water makes the stucco run though the funnel like the picture below:
With this consistency the spraying of the texture came out very nice.
Even though the stucco was very runny, it still clogged the gun quite often. Sometimes the sprayer would stop spraying. Other times the sprayer would get stuck on. To correct this I would detach the air pressure hose and get a garden hose and spray water in the stucco nozzle while holding the sprayer upside down. Then I would spray water through the pressure hose nipple and pump the trigger. When I did this water would pulse out the stucco nozzle. Doing this kept me going and enabled me to finish the job.
The end result is shown below:
Now that the front of the house is stuccoed, I am glad that the pavers are taking so long to arrive. This down time enabled me to stucco the front of the house. And form what I have seen the stucco gets everywhere, I had some sample pavers lying several feet away from the spray area and they got ruined.
By the way when using the stucco sprayer make sure to use, a face shield, respirator, hat, ear plugs and cover your arms and legs.
I plan to wait until next weekend to rip off the plastic and reinstall the lights. I might even paint the plywood under the garage eves.
Well that's all for now. See some tips I came up with in the next blog.
Happy Building
The Dr.
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