Addition · Brevard County, FL
Poolside addition, block to finished wall
An addition off the pool deck, taken from bare block to a finished wall with the window set in. Working beside a pool means masking properly and keeping the deck clean as you go — nobody wants to be picking stucco out of their pool filter for a month afterwards. The finish was matched to the main house so the addition reads as part of the original build rather than something bolted on.
Service performed: New Construction & Additions
The big opening on the end wall
The before photo has a wide opening taking up most of the end elevation, a header across the top of it and nothing but shade behind — a step ladder, a tarp, bare block. A span that width is where a masonry wall concentrates its movement, and the corners of an opening are the first place a crack turns up when nothing has been planned for it. That is why the reinforcement and the joint lines around an opening get worked out before any material is mixed, not after somebody notices a line.
By the middle photo the coat is on outside and turned into the reveal, so the opening has a finished edge the whole way around, while the inside face is still block. Outside first is the normal order. Weather is what you are trying to get in front of.
One small window, high in the wall
In the before photo the little horizontal slider up near the eave is ringed by a wide band of turquoise, masked off well before anything went near it. In the finished photo the same window sits inside a shallow rectangular band of plaster, stepped back a touch from the face of the wall.
The band around a small opening is the fussiest run on an elevation like this. It is short, it is at eye height for anyone standing in the water, and it is the one place on the wall where a wobble has a straight white frame right beside it to be measured against.
Where the wall lands on the deck
Look at the bottom of the finished photo. The plaster runs down and stops on concrete, with the coping of the pool a couple of steps away. That bottom line gets looked at from the water and from a chair, which is closer and more often than any wall on the front of a house ever gets.
It also lives wet. Splash-out, hose water and rain off the deck all land at the foot of that wall, and plaster is not a waterproof layer — the standard that governs how it goes on says so outright. So the base line wants to be held tight and dead straight, and the color wants judging on a dry day rather than off a photo like this one, taken under cloud with the slab still wet.
Cracked, bulging, or just looks tired?
Send a photo or have Tony come take a look. The estimate is free.