Workshop on the Grapevine: Stucco

Date: December 26-27, 2025

I was able to recruit Jerry M, AKA Curly, my concrete guy, to do the stucco work below the siding. This is a layer of cement a few inches above and below the soil line. Some web sites refer to this as "parging" which is defined as "the process of applying a thin coat of cement or mortar to masonry walls to provide protection against the elements". Kinda applies since underneath that ICF Styrofoam is a concrete wall. But in my case I'm using it to bridge between the stick-built wall above and the ICF below as well as areas of exposed ICF on slopes where the siding steps up. Curly said he hadn't done stucco in 30 years but he'd do it for me. I really like working with this guy and he seems to think I'm a good customer. He said his wife asked him how I talked him into it since he was going to get "real sore" [muscles] from it.

When we built the house the parging was done before the siding, so I assumed it was a prerequisite. Curly came out to look at the task in October and after due consideration he asked wouldn't it be better to do it after the siding was up? That way the plaster could run up to the edge of the siding, which makes sense. Also he suggested that the siding guys could put up the lath (i.e. metal mesh to hold the plaster) since he definitely didn't want to do that part of the job. I don't think they used lath on the house - they just put it over the waterproofing board. But for the shop there was a big gap at the top plate because the framers didn't know to install the top plate 1/2" in to leave room for the sheathing wood to stay flush with the ICF. That is, the sheathing was sticking out over the ICF, leaving a 1/2" space which needed to be filled with plaster, so lath was definitely required.

After a brief discussion with Brandon the siding guy who expressed no interest in the lath work, I decided to do the lath myself since I'd worked with it a little bit in my Santa Fe days. It's not that hard I thought. And it wouldn't be if I were still in my 50's. Starting around Thanksgiving, I started to attach the lath with screws.

The lath comes in eight foot by twenty seven inch sheets. For the area where the lath runs horizontally I had to cut it lengthwise. My first idea was to use a metal blade on the SkilSaw. One unwieldy sheet cut that way was proof enough of that idea's merit. I broke out my manual sheet metal sheers and snipped my way through it. Lots of very sharp edges. After slicing my hands two or three times I brilliantly started wearing gloves and worked out the technique for supporting the sheet so the edges peeled away from my hands. FYI the hard part for an old man was in the front of the building where I had to kneel down and put in screws at ground level and it was always hard to find the damn attachment points in the ICF material!

The siding work had brought the deck to front of mind, and I started to think about the piers I'd need to support it. My plan was a concrete pad supporting a tube form to get the base of the locust support well above ground level. Actually the level would need to be high enough so that the locust beams I already have would be high enough to support the deck and the railing. My traditional approach would be to buy some redi-mix concrete and mix it in the wheelbarrow. But my shoulder has been really bothering me after the backfill gravel shoveling, so an alternative implementation was called for. Hey! Curly is a concrete guy and he'll probably bring a cement mixer and he could take care of that too. With the lath ready to go I called and he agreed, and said he'd be out as soon as it looked like it would be warm enough. We'd been having hard frosts in the mornings and the plaster wouldn't tolerate that before it was well set.

Meanwhile on the Seventeenth I got a call from Ryan W, excavator extraordinaire, saying a job had cancelled and could he start with the retaining walls the next week instead of mid-January. I said no and explained that the stucco was a prerequisite for the retaining walls, and we were waiting for good weather. Also we were going to go to Puerto Rico that week for family vacation (1st time in the Caribbean for us).

So I got to work laying out and forming the deck pads so that would be done before we left on the Nineteenth.

While we were in PR,

I get a call from Ryan who has been watching the weather forecasts like a hawk. "Friday looks great for the stuccoing" he said. Friday was Boxing Day and I doubted that Curly would be working. But I called and asked anyway and he said yes!

We were flying back from PR on Christmas Day so I knew that I'd have to make a hard context switch between arriving home about midnight and having Curly start around dawn. Blessedly he didn't arrive until 8:30 so I had time for my two cups of coffee.

Turns out he didn't bring a cement mixer, just two wheelbarrows and his helper Ezekiel.

As they got started on that, I cut and used my vice to bend the rebar I wanted to use for the deck pads and tubes.

It got a bit tight on the east side. They had to shovel the plaster from one wheelbarrow to the other:

Ezekiel drove off to fetch his brother Daniel (helper #2) and I took on the hod carrier role for a bit. When Daniel got there they used one of the wheelbarrows to mix bags redi-mix concrete for the deck pads. I took care of placing the rebar where the tubes would go which is always a hard call to make just like when we did the footing.

By end of day Friday the "scratch coat" was done the deck pads were poured. The way I designed the bottom edge of the siding with a 3/4" board with that plastic vent on top of it worked great as a ledge to push the plaster to without mucking up the vent.

Saturday they were back to put on the top coat.