The STUCCO Process

We decided early on that having old-fashioned stucco on our house would be a nice thing to help the house fit in with the neighborhood. Given that our whole project is based on a budget with just material costs (all our labor is our own) the stucco is a very economical material to use as well.

Traditionally, stucco goes on in 3 layers: Scratch Coat, Brown Coat, & Finish Coat and is around 3/4" or 1" thick. More modern "stucco" walls are done with EIFS (Exterior Insulation & Finishing Systems) - aka "Dryvitt" - where a very thin coat of plasticized stucco- almost think paint- is applied over rigid insulation.

Our stucco is a hybrid. We have the rigid insulation on the outside of our structural wall sheathing, but we have been using a 2 coat system of fiberglass-reinforced stucco that will be about 1/2" to 3/4" thick. It offers good fire protection, better flexibility (to reduce cracking) and with just 2 coats, a quicker installation than old-fashioned stucco.

Some days, Nathan has had help. Kip or Keith has run the mixer and hauled up buckets of "mud" while Nathan puts it on the walls. Most days though, Nathan is doing it all- mixing, hauling, applying, and texturing. In a typical day, Nathan puts up about 10 sacks of stucco- at 80# each, plus water, that's about 1000 pounds! Three days in a row of that and he's ready for a break!
Here's the blow-by-blow.

Here's the set-up:  Cement mixer, several buckets with measured amounts of water, wheel barrow, and scaffolding in the background.

Loading up the mixer..

The wheelbarrow is a good target to dump the mixer- then Nathan scoops up the "mud" onto a "hock"...

Nathan had previously nailed up 1" wire mesh (aka-chicken wire) all over the blue foam. The stucco gets pressed up onto the mesh and sticks to the foam. Trim and windows all needed to be masked off too...

Eventually, the lower parts get finished up and Nathan loads up buckets with "mud" ...

...and hauls it up the ladder to the scaffold plank to get the upper parts finished off :-)

And there we have a finished stucco wall!  (that is, until we do it all again with the finish coat...)
More to come later!

Giving Thanks

Seeing the seasons change again is both exciting- looking  back on how much progress has been made since last year, and a little daunting - accepting how much more there is to do before we are done and moving in...

Today though, we give thanks-  for the wonderful fall weather we have been having - for the patience, perseverance, and encouragement of our family and neighbors in this process - and for the exceptional service of our friends who have lent their time and talents to getting things done! Thanks to you all!

Kip, Gary and Nathan will finish up the last bit of prep work for stucco today: in-between sharing Thanksgiving meals! Tomorrow promises to be a prefect fall day again and we may see all the stucco work finished- certainly by the end of the weekend. Here's some photos from yesterday:

The East Gable- base coat of stucco is all done- foundation, base, and gable. We'll come back to finish the siding once all the stucco is up (just the base coat: we'll probably have to wait until spring to apply the final, integral-color finish coat... unless the winter is really mild).

The South/Front Elevation-  foundation & base are all done here- just a little strip left to do above the porch roof!

The North/Back Elevation-  All done (still have to do the finish coat of stucco next spring)!

The West Elevation is a bit of a trick- there is an old crab apple tree on the property line that we and our neighbor were really hoping not to have to cut back.  The branches go right through where the scaffold jacks need to go- but as you can see, we got them up.  The branch fit between jacks with just 1/2" clearance!

Tight fit- branch just slipping between the 14ft and 20ft jacks!

The North part of the West Elevation is all done with the stucco.  We'll get to the siding in the days ahead.

We will get another post put together with a little more explanation on the stucco process!
Happy Thanksgiving to all!

Stucco!

 Our focus on the house is continuing to be on the outside.  Our friend Kip has been coming up from Cody for the last 2 months, each weekend to help with the house.  The sheet rocking is done in the entire house.  Terese is working all day, most days doing a (beautiful) job mudding.  By the time Nathan is done with the stucco on the outside, the inside might just be ready for flooring!

We've talked about the lovely wall covering that we were excited about doing, American Clay.  We've since decided that the hard labor to put it on and the uncertainty of the color we are getting, we decided to do conventional painted walls.  We estimated that it would take about a month longer to get into the house because Nathan would need to be the person to put the clay up.  We have a most talented painter in our family and decided we should take advantage of that talent.  We also have control over the color.  This will make the overall color of the house work better together.  We are planning on having bamboo flooring in the house (it's a yellowish color) so if we take maple cabinets in the kitchen, bamboo flooring and a taupe/yellow wall color, you can imagine that all that could go bad together really quick if you didn't have control of the wall color.  My office will stay the American Clay (that was our test room).  I'm glad it's staying.  I love it.  But I will love being in the house even more :)

SO!  STUCCO!  Nathan loves working with this product.  It's easy to go on.  Although, his shoulders are getting quite the workout!  We are focusing on the  stucco right now so we can get the blue board covered AND because the stucco needs 40' weather to cure...you can imagine that in November counting on days that have 40' for at least 3 hours is going to get few and far between.  We had a great week this week of 50+ weather (one day was even 60'!).  While the East Coast was getting hammered with hurricanes, we had perfect stucco weather that seems unusually warm for the last week of October. Nathan is taking full advantage of this and working like crazy!  With Kip here working this weekend, Nathan can keep going longer since has a stucco maker here.  He doesn't have to stop to make more stucco, Kip is an excellent mixer!

Loading up on stucco

Wet stucco going on

The light grey is a a wall that was done a few days ago, next to new stucco, the dark grey.