Learn how to make and apply stucco samples to help you choose your finish

Hi guys, Kirk and Jay here with Kirk Giordano plastering today what I want to show is an age-old question we've been getting this since I've been in business I thought man why not just show it once and do a video and that way when folks asked you could show it to them on video instead of doing samples all the time what I'm gonna do here guys we're doing a two coat system a scratch and a brown and they said I want it smooth and I said well how smooth do you want it do you want a scratch in a brown and let it cure and do a Santa Barbara or BMI marble or smooth finish like that or do you want a two coat system he says I want a two coat system we're going to paint it and I wanted as smooth as you can get the two coat so I thought I'd show you folks how smooth we can get the two coats some do's and don'ts first thing we're gonna do is I had this board set up on the ground and Jay said hey dad do you really want to bend down I said hell no not if I don't have to so he set me up here what I'm gonna do guys is I'm gonna scratch this out I want to simulate exactly what we're doing the best way possible and that way means I have to do all my first coat at 3 8 and then my second coat at 3 8 so right now I'm going to do all these squares I won't bore you with doing them all but what I'll do is this one's going to be a hard rubber float finish that's using this after it cures to show you how smooth we can get it and hopefully Jake and zoom in with that camera show you a little bit better there's gonna be a light float finish there's gonna be a heavy float finish a little extra water and this is gonna be a steel trowel finish I'll take my steel trowel and I'll finish it what happens if you use a steel trowel with a scratch and brown it cracks is that normal yes that's why what they do is they put two coats they do a scratch coat they allow a scratch coat to cure then they come with the second coat that also is allowed to cure and what will happen with those two coats naturally during the drying process which is 48 hours for scratch all about I would say we usually go a week minimum to two weeks for three weeks in the winter to allow the brown coat to cure if we're going to do this a color coat so what I'm gonna do here is get these coats on finish this one up here clean it up a little bit put my scratch marks allow that to set for for a little while then we're going to come back and do the follow-up coat I'll show you that when we get to that point okay guys we got that scratch coat set up I feel like I'm back in apprentice school we had to do a lot of these samples a minute ago I was kind of nervous about putting these finishes on because I thought this board was going to flip but that's a pretty solid already so now I'm just gonna go ahead and brown out these squares and I'll show you what the heck I'm referring to with these different finishes okay we just spread this guy out then be doing dude must be working that's one way to spend your lunchtime in hundred-degree weather then again Jason and I are showing you guys how to do this I couldn't have picked out well all depends on how you look at it's a hot day but I don't mind working in the heat I'd rather work in the heat then say 40 degrees or the cold I actually love the heat plus it's helping this sample dry out get back to where it started wow that's for sure this this little a-frame we set up won't flip now because it's pretty sturdy all right guys I'm gonna do is as soon as I'm done here I'm gonna show you immediately what I'm referring to as far as these textures and should I wait 48 hours and come back and show you I could but I think you guys get the point I hope you will because again I'm gonna use this video here to show what you can and what you can't do and what to expect from me or anybody doesn't matter who's doing your stucco work if you tell a fella hey all I want is two coats well besides the skip trial finish I'll show you what we can do as far as to get it smooth now keep in mind guys I've done houses I've done a few custom homes 8,000 10,000 square foot houses and I've had people say Kirk I want a hard steel trial finish and I tell them all well if you want a hard steel trial finish and you only want the two coats you know that when the scratch in the brown cure naturally it's going to hairline the degree of hairline depends on say the house if it's a brand new house on three stories new foundation that house is going to crack because of settling if it's a 50 year old house three stories it's gonna likely crack less anyhow I think I'm getting a feel for this right here to see just how much time is necessary I can look at all of these coats and determine when to do my finish and so stay with me because as I'm just trimming out the corners making it look pretty which is not necessary it's also giving me a chance to get a feel I'm feeling this out and seeing when it's ready for the rest of my so-called smooth finishes okay guys we're stage we're in right now is some of its ready sums not but I don't need it completely ready to show what I'm trying to do okay guys let me show you a few things these are hard rubber floats hard rubber that means they're rubber and they're hard this is a plastic float it's for polishing usually interior these are swimming pool trowels when you're doing swimming pools you may have noticed I use these quite a bit I fancy them they're great square trowels sponge floats okay now Dan walked by earlier says dad I can't even make out what that is how the people on the camera gonna do it there's a hard rubber float what I'm going to show you up here hard rubber float finish down here it's going to be a heavy float finish that heavy just means a lot of water up here is a light finish a little bit of water so it comes out a lot smoother the grain is going to be very fine this is gonna be very heavy because I'm gonna use a lot of water over here it's just gonna be a steel trowel finish all right I'm gonna take the hard rubber float these are hard rubber guys and now this is for a two-coat system we can do an entire wall like this now again if we do the entire wall like this it kind of looks like a well you can still see the grit guys there is some grit because you could only float sand so smooth just like when you trowel it you could only sand trowel down so smooth so the sand if it was interior plaster yeah you can make that pretty smooth like I don't like to use the terminology glass but you could you can get it interior much smoother on exterior you have sand to deal with even if you use a finer sand which tends to crack more you still have sand now that's that's about that's what we call a hard rubber exterior two-coat float system now I'll start up here a light float finish now I have one of my floats in a bucket of water right here this one's got water in it so if I hit this the water is going to drip down here and that's not what I'm looking for these are both dry in order to prove a point I will just use a dry float and basically what I'm doing is I'm bringing out a little bit of sand I'm straightening the wall out compressing it and bringing out a little bit of sand and I can go this I can bring the sand out twice as much or half as much but this is what I consider a light float finish it was just very light just keep going over it then we let up and if I wanted to I can get even smoother than that by allowing time or just coming back with a dry float time and since I'm working against time meaning I'm doing all this right now rather than three separate days that that is a light float finish done with these green sponge floats okay I will do this one here this is a heavy float finish or you can go medium or heavy float finish now the idea is put some water on it guys now the water brings out the sand or aggregate okay it's bringing out the so-called aggregate aggregate just a fancy word for sand or rocks Portland cement has sand concrete has rocks both made with Portland cement the only difference is the aggregate size okay now you see that brings out a lot of the grit if I want to bring even more I just put more water and just I can leave float lines in it where you see the lines or I can just go over it a few times where there's no float lines but you get the idea okay now that is a heavy float finish and this is the less likely to crack of all of them but will they all absolutely okay now the last thing I'm going to show you guys is a hard steel trowel finish and I could use a square trowel or the other trough now this here again you could only steal trowel sand so much again I stay away from that terminology glass because this has sand in it this is mighty smooth right here what happens with the mighty smooth two-coat finish this when it cures or cracks but we don't have that time and we're not going to show that I'm just going to explain it you will get cracks in it hairline cracks like when I say hairline like the hair on your head it will crack especially under windows and doors if you just do a two-coat system when I worked Union 30 years ago we had slickers like this two hand and we would slick the houses down and that was when I was working for McDermott and Sealy Danny Smith plastering a lot of those big companies and the slickers we do the scratch coat then the brown and we slick it and I remember saying hey isn't it gonna crack he said that's not our business our job is to do a two-coat finish okay guys I want to refresh that video because Jay at the end told me dad you screwed that up he's also licensed contractor so he knows what I know and sometimes I get sidetracked of what we're doing we're doing a lot of things that day anyway my old sample right there was discarded like yesterday's old newspapers but the point I was trying to make which I didn't get through so clearly was that the top two finishes the hard rubber float the fine float finish and the left one on the bottom which are a heavy float finish those are all breathable the stucco can breathe and when I was mentioning cracking what I should have said was to not scare the crap out of everybody is that they were hairline possibly possibly the hairline like the hair on your head but that's okay cuz 28 days later you paint it and the good quality paint will either bridge it or flood it what we call so there's no worries with that what I was really trying to point out with that video yesterday was that when we steal trial a brown coat it doesn't matter what stucco company contractor does it if you steal trial a brown coat now what you do is seal it because it can't breathe so those are the ones that usually will hairline almost every time but if you're gonna paint it it's not such a big deal these folks know it and they said Kirk we're not it's okay you've done work for us in the past years ago and we've seen some hairlines but it's not a big deal it's a two coat system so that's what I really wanted to point out and by the way guys the majority of homes that were built have two coat systems color coats come out in 1926 they didn't always use those so the majority of all the color coats in California that I'm aware were probably in the whole country are two coat systems and will they hairline sure they will especially where windows and doors cause heavy vibration but it's not such a huge concern I think Jay was right I scared the crap out of too many folks all you need to do is a good quality paint after the brown coat has cured 28 days is painted in a good paint will flood those anyhow guys my name is Kirk I'm with Kirk Giordano plastering hope that cleared it up we thank you for watching and as usual we'll see you guys on the next one