Using stucco to refinish the exterior of your house: part 7 half the house is stuccoed

In the last blog I stuccoed the front of the house with white base  finish coat.  I am very pleased with the results.  The texture of the stucco  and color of white base is very nice and all my neighbors have come by and complemented me on the appearance of the house and said it was a good job. It does help however that my house was a disaster area not to long ago which provides contrast.

This time around I have stuccoed half the house and it is very easy.

For this blog I would like to talk about a few new practices I'm doing.   First, my sprayer got so clogged, I had to take it apart.  The stucco was clogging the jets and I cleaned it with compressed air, water and a wire brush.   I also inserted a nail through the jet.  When doing this I realized it might be a good idea to take it apart and clean it after very use.  When I put it back together I put antiseize on everything that had threads.

Additionally I might have found out what causes the sprayer to get stuck on.   The jury is still out though until I finish the entire house.  The lever has a plunger that gets stucco in it.  Eventually all the grit interferes with the on off action and it gets stuck on.  To try to help with that I am experimenting with a protective boot on the plunger.  The perfect boot for this can be found on the brake pins of some cars.  Luckily they sell the boots separately at autozone and are called pin boots or brake hardware.  I actually had to use a pair of scissors to make them the right size but the end result is shown below:

So far the stuck on failure has not happened but I have only put two bags of stucco through it.

The other thing I'm doing differently is I invested in some protective wear and covers.  Since the over spray was larger than I expected when I prayed near the roof,  my roof got stuccoed a bit.  If it bothers me Ill replace the shingles in the area that got hit.  Not a big deal.  But it is stronger with stucco on it....maybe I should stucco my whole roof. :) 

For this time around I found some drop clothes at Lowes and covered things up with them.  Additionally I got a painters suit, more face shields, ear plugs and a respirator.  When I have all this on I look like an alien with a stucco sprayer for a weapon.

You can see a freshly stuccoed wall behind me.

I intend to stucco one more wall on the house and then switch back to the paver installation for the driveway since the pavers will be arriving next week.   This is great since I always like to quit a job when it is half done.  :)  Not really.  It will nag me incessantly until I finish it.

Anyway cant be more happy with the way its going for the exterior.  I'm thinking about getting into stuccoing for a profession.  Not really interested in doing houses though.  My focus would be expensive cars.  Anybody need their car stuccoed?  Ill do it for free. :)

That is all for now until the next blog,

Happy Building,

The Dr.