Using stucco to refinish the exterior of your house: part 6 applying the stucco

In the last blog I discussed colors that are available for stucco.  I chose not to color the stucco but use the white base finish stucco as the finish color.  Going by the color chart I determined that the stucco that the professional had done on the garage was white.

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.

Using stucco to refinish the exterior of your house: part 5 choosing the color

In the last blog I discussed some stucco textures I was experimenting with.

In addition to texture, stucco color is a consideration.  The stucco liquid color has a base number of 1319 and the colors that can be had are at this link.   Unfortunately, they cannot be found in my area and the only way to get them is by going through the pro desk at Lowe's.  And to top it off it only comes by the case.   Seeing as I could not get a single bottle of a color to try out and because it takes awhile for the color to reach its final color when it is in the stucco, I contacted quickcrete and they sent me stucco samples of what all the colors look like.  This is shown below:

Based on the color chart, the colors seem to be light colors.  I think there are other ways to color stucco though.  When comparing the color chart to my garage stucco it turns out it really is white without coloring.  Since I like the result I'm going to go with just white finish coat for the color.  If I end up not liking it I can always respray the house with color additives.

Other than that, since my compressor tank did not come in until after the weekend and because I spent an entire Sunday fixing my sister's air conditioner (which by the way was quite a pleasurable experience for me since I like to trouble shoot) I did not get any more practice in.

The compressor tank I bought can be found at this link and is shown below.

 

The ideas is to hook the stucco sprayer directly up to the two tanks before the regulator so that there is large air flow (CFM).  The direct connection is what is recommended in the directions for the sprayer.  The double tank is my idea to have less cycling of the compressor.  Although the down side is longer to fill up the tanks.  The PSI for the sprayer should be from 100 to 120 PSI.  My compressor turns off and on at 130 PSI and 100 PSI and I think this will be ok for the sprayer.


I did manage to spend some time putting plastic on the eaves to prevent the stucco sprayer from coating them.  I found that this product works good for covering eaves when I cut it down the center line for the entire 50' length.  The tape used is poly stucco tape.

 

I have a bit more covering of the eaves and doors and maybe a crack repair and then maybe some more stucco practice to make sure I can get a good consistent stucco texture.  But then it should be go time for the whole front of the house.

That's all for now,   See the results of stuccoing the house in the next blog.

Happy Building!

The Dr.

Using stucco to refinish the exterior of your house: part 4 choosing the texture

In the previous blog I discussed how I gained some practice with applying stucco without applying stucco to the house. This idea came from the stucco book.   In this blog I will focus on stucco textures that I'm considering. An article that shows examples of stucco textures is at this link  Of course experimenting with textures means another weekend of practice before I actually apply stucco to the house.

Before a texture can be done, the stucco has to be put on the wall. I mentioned last time that I was not going to use a hopper because the air compressor requirements were too steep. But a lot of work is necessary to get the stucco on the wall and I was really wishing I could use the hopper because it would be much faster.  For example see this video.  It was also expensive at $260. But that is small compared to the $12000 stucco job I am doing. When I was reading the stucco book, I found out the hopper is also referred to as a mortar sprayer. When I put that search term in amazon.com I found another interesting hopper I had not seen before. It was cheaper at $195 and it had the ability to be used with smaller compressors by plugging some of the holes. This prompted me to purchase the one at this link.  There is also more info on mortar sprayers at this link.

The first time I used the mortar sprayer, I was able to completely cover the piece of plywood unlike the last time I used the trowel to get the stucco on the plywood.   But I did use up one entire bag for one piece of plywood.  The mortar sprayer put a heavy dash texture on the plywood and this is shown below.

  

 

The first thing I tried was to use a darby to smooth it out.   The darby did not get the whole surface flat because there were depressions in some areas.  So if I wanted the surface flat I would have to come in with more stucco to fill the depressions and then smooth it out with the darby.   Once I smoothed the surface out I resprayed the stucco covered plywood with the mortar sprayer with a quick dash coat and then after about 15 to 20 minutes I knocked it down with the trowel.  The result looked very pleasing to me.

I know I was hesitating at the expense of the mortar sprayer above, but the idea of saving time with a sprayer and getting a professional look overruled the hesitation, so I went all out and bought a $355 stucco texture sprayer available at this link.  This stucco sprayer has too adjustments to control the texture of the stucco and can go from a smooth finish to a heavy dash.   The smooth finish result is shown below:

 

 

The finish in the picture can be improved I think.  Its a little bit dashy and that's probably because the stucco mix I used could have been runnier.  The sprayer comes with a funnel to measure flow of the mix and there is supposed to be a steady flow through the funnel but I didn't quite achieve that because I was experimenting.  Another improvement would be my air compressor cycles too much.  I have on order another air tank so that my compressor will have two 20 gallon air tanks.  Also the instructions mention tapping directly form the air tanks instead of the pressure regulator which I was not doing.  Correcting these problems may provide a better spraying experience.

  

When using the sprayer, I found out the surface that the finish goes on needs to be smooth to some extent as the texture coat will show irregularities in the surface.  I also found out that the surface needs to be somewhat resistant to the material thrown at it with the sprayer, in other words wet/soft stucco may not make a good surface to spray the texture coat on because it may splash and make dents in the surface.  Finally, its absolutely necessary to where a air mask such as the one at this link.

The good news is there is good potential with this sprayer.  I like it better than the knock down dash I had done earlier.  Furthermore, the sprayer coated the whole sheet of plywood and only used half a  bag of stucco.  Using the sprayer will mean about a $500 savings in stucco materials compared to the other mortar sprayer method and my inexperienced trowel method and will pay for itself.

Since I bought the other mortar sprayer from Amazon, I was able to return it and get my money back.

Well that's all for now,  Next blog.

Happy Building

The Dr.

Using stucco to refinish the exterior of your house: part 3 stucco practice

In the previous blog I detailed the preparation of the house exterior for stucco.  I did not prepare the entire house exterior since I really wanted to get the front of the house done first so that the paver's that I will be installing wont get ruined.  They haven't arrived yet.

In this blog I describe my experiences with practicing applying stucco.

I only spent 1.5 hours this weak practicing.  That's because the grant seafood festival was in full swing this weekend and I really needed some fried oysters.

 

And don't forget the lobster roll, mmmm so good.

Anyway since I am learning how to stucco, I have watched a number of videos on stuccoing.  A few videos I ran across that were interesting are video video  and this video.  Here is a bonding agent video.   I also read about stucco colors at this link  and this is an interesting how to link.  I also got two books off of amazon.com (link and link) which are good and have a few details that are not on the internet but probably not necessary to have bought them.
  
My house has 2500 sq ft of wall and since one bag of white finish stucco covers 76 square feet or 33 bags is needed I decided  to buy a cement mixer to make the mixing process easier.   The one I bought can be found at northern tool at this link.  It is common to read that a mortar mixer should be used to mix stucco.  But the $250 cement mixer is a lot cheaper and I have found it works good.

Assembling the cement mixer was time consuming.  Getting the customer to do that job must save the manufacturer a lot of money.  To top it off, there were bolts missing, the seal was broken in the box and the directions were full of errors causing me to make errors in assembly steps.  But the mixer works well mixing stucco....very happy with it.  Here is a pic with the stucco being mixed  in it.

 

            

So to practice stucco I bought a bunch of stucco tools.  I bought a smooth darby, serrated darby, a hawk, a hard rubber float, two red sponge floats, a soft yellow sponge float  and  a dash brush.  I also bought the cheapest sheet of orientated strand board (osb) to stucco.   After mixing the stucco I applied it to the wood board with my steal trowel and then ran over it with the smooth edge darby.  So glad I bought the darby, it was pretty easy to get the surface flat with it.  Although I see kirk apply finish coat without a darby so maybe I need some more practice.

My first attempt at stuccoing a wall is shown below:

  

I didn't quite cover the whole sheet of wood with one 80 pound bag.  I must have put it on thick and at this rate it would require 80 to 100 bags to stucco the house.  Hopefully, I can spread it thinner because it is $14 a bag.

Also it dried very white and I am now thinking about getting some off white colors to make the white more appealing.

Next I tried all the floats I had.  I liked the wet sponge float effect the best.  It seemed to leave streak marks so went over it with a dry red sponge float.  The combination looks good an the effect of the float seams to  lighten the stucco up and fill in all the small holes making it look as if it were painted.  Here is a video about using a sponge float.

Next weekend the dash brush will arrive.  And I will give the knock down dash texture a try.  Also I hope to experiment with different colors of white. 

I also read about some texture machine methods that looked interesting.   One is the hopper used in conjunction with an air compressor (the air compressor requirements seem to make this not feasible for me) at this link,  The other is a Gracco texture machine available for rent at home depot at this link.   I don't think I'll use any of these but I always have the option to go over the whole house with these if I choose once I'm done.  I think it is important to have a smooth flat surface with these machines and there advantage is that they are fast.

That's all for now,  See what texture I chose in the next blog.

Happy Building,

The Dr.

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.