Addition · Rockledge, FL
New lakeside windows stuccoed in on a Rockledge home
New picture windows had just gone in on the lakeside wall, with bare block exposed underneath. We masked the glass, scratch-coated over the block, and tied it back into the rest of the wall so the new and old read as one.
Service performed: New Construction & Additions
Where we work: Stucco repair in Rockledge
Bare block under a brand new window
The before photo is one wall carrying three new windows and a hole in its own history. Under the middle unit the finish is gone down to grey block and you can read every mortar joint in it. Everything that came off is lying on the ground below. Around the other two openings the old coat is snapped back to a rough edge. The glass on the left is holding a reflection of the water the house sits on.
Block drinks. A dry masonry face will pull the water straight out of a fresh mix before the cement has finished using it, so the first pass over an exposed patch like that starts with wetting the block down and filling the joints flush — not with racing to a flat wall.
Everything made of glass goes under paper first
In the after photo all three windows have disappeared behind kraft paper and blue tape, cut to the frame line. That is not tidiness. Cement splash does not come off glass the way paint does, and new frames are the last thing anybody wants to be going at with a blade, so openings get masked before a bucket is mixed rather than wiped down after.
Same for the outlet box low on the wall and the cable running down from the eave. Anything hanging on an elevation either comes off it or gets wrapped.
One coat across the whole wall, not three patches
The new coat does not stop at the openings. It runs corner to corner and up under the eave, over the old finish as well as over the new block. Three separate patches on one elevation would have left three outlines to hide, each one drying at its own rate and each one with its own edge to feather.
There is more to it than looks. Joints in plaster work are planned, not discovered: the standard puts a control joint in where a panel of wall gets large and wherever the substrate changes from one material to another, which on this wall is precisely the line between old finish and bare block. Where those lines fall is settled before the first coat goes on, because afterwards is too late to move them.
Cracked, bulging, or just looks tired?
Send a photo or have Tony come take a look. The estimate is free.