How To Repair Stucco House

It's nearly time I share more about our landscaping project that I've been teasing virtually for awhile. I terminal left off sharing how I saved thousands of dollars and saved foliage from the landfill when trying to articulate out our front k to make way for new plantings.

Once we removed the existing plantings and admired our dirt pile, information technology became obvious that there was some stucco repair to be done. I'm here to share what I did, how I did information technology, and give you some satisfying before and afters to enjoy.

Now, I realize this isn't a DIY projection that most people demand to do. Only I want to share this mail service to go on y'all updated on the piece of work that went into the restoration of my home and demonstrate the power of a determined DIYing adult female (me). If you have the privilege of time, energy, concrete ability, and money, you can practice nearly any dwelling comeback project - fifty-fifty the unglamorous ones. Plus, I took a bunch of photos, so I need to publish them on the cyberspace - If I don't prove I did it, did the projection didn't even happen??

If you haven't already, click here for a preview of all of my posts most the adjourn appeal of the business firm including the befores, the new roof, managing the foliage, and my favorite gardening tools.

Our house is primarily woods siding, simply the foundation and porch are all stucco over brick. After the distracting dead plants were removed, the damaged stucco became the new eyesore.

Pieces were croaky, flaking, or missing. Some was coming off considering vines got in behind the finish glaze of stucco. Luckily, it wasn't structural so there was no urgency to repair information technology, but if there was a time set up it, it'd be when the perimeter of the house was free of leaf.

So, I got to work. I somehow ended up doing this projection in the expressionless estrus of summertime, without shade, and sitting on soil infested with ants. In that location are mode worst projects to do out there, but if you practice this 1, I don't recommend doing it in when it'southward blazing hot out and maybe wear those boot/pants that fishermen wearable to prevent the ant bites.

I got to work with my trusty 6-in-ane tool to chip away all of the stucco that was loose. And so cleaned off the flaky edges with a wire brush. I scraped off the finish coat and the base coat - annihilation loose, it came off.

I scraped

and scraped.

What I thought would be a couple of little patch jobs turned into refinishing all of the forepart porch and big swaths of stucco around the perimeter of the house.

Once I scraped all of the loose pieces off and sufficiently shaved all of the skin off my knuckles, it was time to patch everything support.

I got the materials at a building supply place that primarily sells directly to contractors doing major jobs. Virtually orders are put on a truck bed using a forklift and a palate full of materials. I call up I received the tiniest lodge on a forklift ever (run into the single bag in the upper right corner) and loaded information technology into i of the most non-truck-like automobiles (Prius) - and I'm proud of information technology.

Disclaimer: I'one thousand going to show you lot what I did for MY particular project. There are a bunch of products and techniques out in that location. I highly recommend Kirk'southward videos for learning the many unlike ways to apply finishes with dissimilar products. Also I did this project over 3 years ago, so my memory of all of the step-by-steps is a little rusty.

I did 2 steps of the stucco process. The base coat and the finish coat. Depending on the job, you can get away with but the finish coat, or if you're doing a fresh stucco job, you'll need a scratch coat on top of the wire mesh. Simply, I'thousand not going to cover that since I didn't practise it.

No matter what projection you're doing, you'll want to spend nearly 100 hours watching Kirk Giordano videos on YouTube. Even if you aren't doing this projection, you'll however want to scout because his cadency makes me chuckle and he'southward super informative. I also find these videos as satisfying as watching people make a block. I'm going to reference Kirk several times in this postal service because I owe everything I know to him.

Anyway. Here'southward what I did in summary.

i. Scrape away loose materials

I shared this higher up, simply I must echo once more that removing loose pieces and dust is super duper of import. New material won't stick to the flaky dusty stuff.

Side note. There's something that I actually like about revealing the brick underneath the stucco. It's such a beautiful reminder of the work that went into building my house over 100 years ago. I find it kinda corking to touch the piece of brick that someone else touched just hasn't been seen for 100 years. Ya know what I hateful?

two. Mist the surface with a hose

Misting cleans off the surface and adds moisture to the brick to aid in the adhesion. Without the h2o, the brick might pull besides much water out of the mud and so the cement won't cure properly.

iii. Mix the base coat

For my project, I chose to do a base coat to fill in the deep cavities and imperfections. Some folks but apply a color coat just since that needs to be practical so thinly, it would have required 8 or so layers, and I didn't want to do this 8 times. Two coats would be enough for me. I went for a base coat that I could make actress thick, and so put a color coat on peak to get the texture I wanted.

I used this for my base of operations coat. It'south a portland cement with added polymers for adhesion and support. Information technology'south designed for EXACTLY what I was doing - filling cracks and preparing for a finish glaze. Some folks recommend painting an agglutinative glue on the wall before applying portland cement, but this was basically a 2-in-1 so it saved me a pace.

Since I was only one person, I couldn't piece of work with too much mud at a time or else it would all dry out. Because I was mixing pocket-sized batches, I didn't need a heavy-duty cement mixer so using my drill with a cement mixer attachment worked perfectly for me. If I had a team of helpers, the drill may not have had the power to keep upward.

I used a big bucket that I had on mitt to add h2o and dry mix. I followed the bundle instructions which said to mix to a peanut butter consistency then permit it sit down for v minutes. I do equally I'k told.

4. Employ the militarist and trowel to apply the mud

Once the mud was mixed in the big bucket, I scooped information technology onto my hawk. You lot tin use a professional bucket scoop or dump the whole bucket of mud onto a tabletop. But I used an empty hummus container. Because I'm extra professional.

Repairing Stucco The Gold Hive-haw and trowel.jpg

The hawk is basically a flat slice of metal on a handle designed kinda similar you're holding an ice foam cone with a pizza box glued on top. It lets you agree the mud on it simply likewise lets you lot hands scrape information technology onto the trowel. It takes some exercise to go the hang of how to utilise it, but in one case you get going it becomes 2nd nature. I liked using a "pool trowel" because it had curved corners which fabricated the application more forgiving for a newbie.

Apply the mud with the trowel always from the bottom upwards. At first, the goal is to become the mud on the wall, so later everything got coverage, I went over information technology with the trowel to smooth it out and feather the edges into the existing stucco. This description I gave is non enough, y'all definitely need to watch Kirk in activity.

5. Brand repairs to major cracks

I had a large fissure at the stairs that I wanted to reinforce while I was at it. There are a few dissimilar options out there from filling with special exterior caulk to only filling with the base coat. At the recommendation of the nice homo at the building supply company, I tossed on a few pieces of fiberglass mesh tape that I already had on hand from when I did interior wall repair. Then, I coated over the tape with a thin coat of the base mud. Who knows if those pieces did annihilation, but it'southward three years later and in that location's not even a ghost of the crack anymore.

6. Bladder the mud

The trowel is designed to go the mud on the wall, and then the sponge float is designed to smooth information technology all out. There are two types of floats out in that location - the reddish float and the greenish float. Kirk demonstrates them both here simply in summary the red float is designed to compact the mud and the green one is designed to bring the sand in the mud to the surface to create texture. For the base coat, I wasn't aiming for a texture. My goal was to smooth out the fresh mud, alloy it into the existing terminate, and ensure Information technology got into all the cracks. And then I used a red float. (I used the green one on the finish glaze.)

This is where the second saucepan comes in handy. The first 1 is holding the mud, merely the second one is for plainly 'ol water which is necessary for rinsing the float. I dunked the float in the h2o, tapped it on the side of the bucket to picture off the excess h2o, then rubbed the float on the wall in sorta-circular motions. I wasn't too concerned with the look of the texture since I was going to embrace it up, but the base of operations glaze is laying the groundwork for the superlative coat, so making sure information technology'due south smooth and there aren't any bumpy transitions into the existing cease is key.

Equally the float filled upward with mud, or if I felt too much of a drag, I'd douse it in the bucket and re-rinse. Then, I'd echo over and over and over and over smoothing out all of the mud before it hardened. Using circular motions I feathered out the fresh mud until information technology was all smooth.

I worked in sections making my fashion around the perimeter of the business firm. On the right is the finished base glaze and the left is only scraped and prepare for its base of operations coat. I fabricated certain to prep, utilize, and float only plenty mud that I could tackle before it dried out completely.

Here's the "finished" base coat. Information technology's yet actually rough, but the surface is smooth, the edges are make clean, and it'due south a solid foundation for the upcoming end coat.

7. Float the stop coat

The finish coat follows all of the above steps, so I won't repeat them. But, instead of using the base textile, I used a finishing coat stucco. This is the part where you need to research YOUR detail stop. Since I was doing repairs, my goal was to match the existing finish, merely if you're doing a fresh project, you can pick your favorite texture. When eyeing the existing texture, keep in mind that it probable has several coats of paint on it, so your new mud texture might be grittier than what you meet on your walls.

I used a 20/30 texture to match the existing stucco on my item habitation. The irony is I basically re-stuccoed the whole house so I could have picked whatsoever finish. Luckily I like the fine texture of the 20/30.

I applied the stucco with the hawk and trowel but equally before, merely this is the phase when I followed up with the trusty green float. For this stage, the float'southward goal across evening out the surface is to create texture. The action of swirling the wet float brings out the sand in the finish which gives information technology the desired texture. Since this is the terminal surface glaze, I made extra sure to feather the mud into the existing height glaze and then it wouldn't look like there was new stucco.

In the photo in a higher place you can look closely to see the finish coat is applied on the sides but not the top of the columns. Observe the gritty surface on the sides but not the tiptop? I worked my manner around and paid super close attention to the edges to make sure there weren't any abrupt corners. I would sometimes circle dorsum to a previous spot and practise bear upon ups but by wetting the float.

8. Permit cure

In one case everything was retextured, I let it cure. Since water is such a critical part of the adhesion and texture of stucco and cement products, rushing to trap the moisture in with paint is never recommended. Also, rushing to dry it is bad, too. I spent a few weeks watering my stucco to make sure the blazing summertime oestrus didn't suck the moisture too speedily. After a few days of misting the walls with a garden hose, I waited for Kirk's recommended 28 days to allow it dry out. Our house had these bright white bandaids for a solid month which probably made the neighbors retrieve I forgot about the project. It was clearly a work in progress, okay people?

9. Prime and paint

Once the stucco was fully cured, I painted! There are actually a bunch of finish products that have a born color, which is why many are called a "color coat" but I wanted my stucco to lucifer my siding colour and then I knew I wanted to pigment it. I could accept tried to become a stucco like to the siding color, but since I plan on painting all that one day, I wasn't going to worry nigh matching a colour I didn't want to continue.

I don't think I tin clear how gooooood it felt to paint everything after the whole process. I looked dorsum at the fourth dimension stamps of when I commencement took photos of scraping the finish and information technology turns out I took them in early on May. Based on the pumpkins on the steps, it'southward clear I didn't become to painting until October/November! Information technology took an entire summer because I was working total time, the materials took time to cure, and I too did a bunch of other projects in between. It took me awhile, only I'm simply one person, okay?!

Hither's a overnice view of the master area I had to repair. Looks pretty skilful, eh?? I mean, there was previously a big crack and views to the brick underneath. Can you lot tell some is new and some is old? The goal with most all of my projects is to await similar I never did any repairs. It's kinda ironic because an unnoticed comeback feels like information technology negates all the work I did, but that's how you know it was a chore well done.

Repairing Stucco The Gold Hive progress and after.jpg

the gold hive before and after of stucco repair.jpg

Check out the lower left corner of that cavalcade in the foreground. Such a happier lil' column.

I finished the stucco repair and the fence repair that summertime merely in time to plant the garden in the autumn. Cheque out the button beneath for more curb appeal posts and to go ahead in time to see the garden fill in.