Howdy folks, kirk, and Jason here with kirk Giordano plastering.
I have my youngest son Dan here too. He's been in Sonora doing a lot of entrepreneur work and
construction up there; he's been there for like two years; anyway, he's helping us on this house.
What we have here is a two-story house and what we're going to do is the lath,
scratch brown in a maintenance-free color finish. That just means like a brick; when you
put it on the wall, it's forever. It will never come off. It's integrated with the stucco, that
just means, again, it won't peel off come off. It'll last hundreds of years; those are color coat
maintenance-free finishes versus a painted finish, and he said, what's the difference? I said well,
if you paint if i do a two-coat system and you paint it every 10 years, you got to repaint it.
So he said okay, I'll go with the color coat maintenance-free finish; it's a little bit
more expensive but not even as much as a paint job anyway; this is what we got on typical jobs,
i just met here, Jay and I met with the homeowners, two days ago and today we're starting.
We bid it, i bid this five months ago, anyway, so this is what we have. So you want to be a big-time
stucco contractor? Well, i'm a medium-sized stucco contractor these days. I used to have
15 guys for 15 or 20 years, I don't do that anymore i work with my family, so for the last
10 15, we've been doing videos; it's all family stuff anyway; for example,
Jay and I were looking at this, and we were going over with the homeowner. I said man,
we got to figure out a way that the city says, hey, I like that because we got to put a weep
screed here, and what's a weep screed? I'm going to show you that in a minute, so we can't put the
weep screed directly on here; the city wants if you're doing a deck, a roof, a front porch, a
back porch, they want to see that weep screed off because if you ever need to change this, you don't
want to tear off all the stucco. So somehow, we've got to put a piece of metal in here, but we'll,
we'll figure that out later. What i'm trying to tell you guys or what we're trying to show you
is the life and times of what we go through. As we walk around if you guys see anything that you say,
hey man, how do you do this? How do you do that? Just write it down, and we'll show it because
we're not going to show a lot of stuff here we're just going to do it and get out of here.
For example, like this pillar now they had this whole house had the weirdest texture if i think
it's weird, it was really weird, so they had a lot of wood rot all over the place, and they
called me five months ago and said what do you think? I said to tear it all of the stucco off.
It's very rare for me to say that, but there's a house over there. See that the red tile roof?
We did that about six years ago, and that was the same thing I was working with my
buddy Larry Beilman; we had to tear all the stucco off because it was just it's an old neighborhood;
these houses are 100 years old, and they had parapets. The parapets fail in about 50 to 80
years, so water gets in there. Anyway, so they tore all the stucco off, and then now we have to
come and look how we're going to improvise with what we have to work with, so I looked at this,
and i thought, man, what what are we supposed to do with that? He said that's your job,
I said okay, man, I'll tell you what we'll do; we're going to pressure wash that, then I'll
put a bonding agent, i'm going to build this up from scratch, and give it a kind of a cool look,
part of being a contractor with you guys. I'll show you. I'll give you some tips on things
we're not really going to do anything in this video, i'm just going to show you
what we do because we've been showing what we do for about 15 years on youtube, so like, say,
for example, this arch how are you going to do an arch we're going to paper up to here,
we're going to take this Flex Wrap, Dupont makes it. It fans out, so if the paper's right to here,
I can use this and fan it out, and it'll come up this, and it'll accordion out right
here makes good corners. Can i do it with just paper? Sure i can. Is it worth the 300 bucks
for this? I think so because it saves me a lot of time, and it assures that these don't leak.
also, we got this Straight Flash i'm going to show you why we got this Straight Flash, and it
has three little pieces here; this is for existing windows, with no paper when you tear the stucco
off, and you have a 100-year-old house, it's like how you going to waterproof those windows
I'll show you how we prefer to do them. now i'm working with Dan; he's been back from
Sonora to help us out with this, and what Dan and i just did, this is Dan; you guys remember him?
he helped me put this piece here, i'm going to show you just what we're doing over here now, Dan,
Dan did this over here, oh by the way too,
loud compressor, Dan, you want to turn that off that compresses it for a minute? What we're doing
here, guys, is you know they've covered this, because why I got my shirt collar up? Because
it is cold, it's really cold. It's been raining a lot, and the contractor had to put the
plastic here a number of times because what happens if the rainwater gets on this wood?
It swells it like a sponge, so he didn't want that, so when we got here, they're
installing all of the vents right now, all the way around, so we can't work here, but we were working
together with everybody how thick does stucco have to be? 7/8 of an inch. What if it's an inch
no big deal. It's not going to be seen. This box right here has to come out 7/8. It's 2 inches,
so I'll have to tell the guys, hey, you got to inset this for 7/8 of an inch. By the way, we're
working for Tom Carroll of Carroll construction, Carroll Construction. He's done about 30 of these
houses. I know I've been working for 20 years. He does more work in Alameda than possibly all the
rest of the concrete foundation specialists put together. He does. He just did this. Two days ago,
he raises houses; you name it, he does it. He's gonna put the concrete here,
pave it out he's gonna do a lot of stuff, so you can, I'll put in the description Tom's number,
Tom Carroll of Carroll Construction because i work a lot for him and he works by the hour or
by the job, you name it he does it he's got a huge crew, and they know what they're doing. Anyway,
I think we're going to start the other side. one more little bone about what we're doing and
some of the things that you have to prep with and you have to understand these things if you don't
understand them the job can leak and if i don't explain them well, then that detail can hurt me
because everybody expects me to tell them exactly what is necessary, what needs to
be done beforehand not after it leaks. So i'm going to show you some of that stuff. So I'll
show you some other things about you want to be a contractor you got to understand all this stuff.
Josh, uh Josh, here is Tom Carroll's right-hand man, Josh. What up, dude? What's going on?
I'll show you what he's done right here and what he's doing, and guys, this is stuff we got to
explain to people. Otherwise, it'll bite us, so if you're in my position, you've got to explain all
this stuff well. You see this curb right here? How can we put a weep screed here? We can't put the
weep screed inside this because all the water will drain in here and rot out that mudsill within u
a year or two. So we can't do that. So what Josh is doing is he's taking this curb off;
it's an afterthought. Anyway, guys, it's not original. He's taking this off here because
they used to have a wall right here. I thought, who would put a wall in a walkway?
But anyway, that's gone, so he's going to remove this out of here, excuse me Josh,
all right, thank you, my friend, so what that curb he's taking that curb off because
here's what we need, guys we need a clean plane like this because we are placing
this weep screed needs to be below the mud seal to protect the mud seal. So it's down
here, so that's why Josh is doing that. Again Josh is Tom Carrol's, right-hand man.
They're working in the back, and they called me and said, Kirk, where were we supposed to put
the vents? And I said Josh, Josh, you got this man that's i'm all i am is a stucco contractor. Man,
i'm not a GC, so Josh had to go back and tell him where to put it, i said that's GC work not,
not us; I'll show you too. Also, guys, this is, this is one of the most critical now, we took
all that paper off, and if it starts to rain later on tonight, now i'm responsible for these walls,
so we're gonna any areas we took the plastic off. Now we have to waterproof it, here's what I
suggested, now this was one of the main concerns of the GC Tom Carroll and the homeowner Declan,
he said how are you gonna waterproof this? I said i don't know. I'm kidding, man. We know how to
do that. What we do is now you didn't hear me say this, but i'm gonna take this rag and douse it in
not alcohol because that just wouldn't be right, i'm going to clean this sill, so i'm going to have
this my gloves on and clean this put something on it maybe gasoline, and wipe it down here,
why am i going to do that because this needs to adhere. What is this? This is a straight flash.
You got one piece that sticks and these two, down here you pull off two
and what the best way to do an existing windows guys if you don't want it to leak,
and since i'm now responsible, because i took on the job, we put our paper right up to here
and then we take one of these one solid inch, this is four-inch stuff. So i'm just going to
show you guys. So if i have my paper right up to here, this will go on to my paper, and then
because I cleaned this bottom from dust, dirt, and grime with gasoline or whatever I want to use,
then i'm going to tuck this in here like this, real tight and seal it like that.
That's the way i like to do it because when the rain hits this, it's going to drip down,
and if it's windy, it'll go here and blow inside, and if this is not sealed, I mean, if it's not
it's cold day right now, that's popping right off it was a hot day I wouldn't be able to do that.
But anyway that's how I do it, you know we make sure that these windows when they're
existing do not leak, then when we're done we paper the sides here and put polyurethane
caulking in there, the idea is if you start something and it's cold weather, and it's raining,
you better know what you're doing guys. Okay, folks, so you want to be a big-time
stucco contractor? I forgot where I left off? Because we got rained out a couple times,
but I'll show you where we're going now and again, i just wanted to throw the bone to
Tom Carroll of Carroll Construction in Alameda. He does all the foundation general contracting,
lifts house's drops them, rebuilds them, you name it, he does it; I'll put his name,
I'll put in the description and how to reach him, but I'll show you where i think we were at
the arches and the corner aids are done.
The waterproofing of these solid surfaces these are flat, so if i put paper on a flat surface,
it's only a matter of time before water gets in there; you can't do that; you could put
a membrane, so where we showed a few separate videos of how to do these corners, because even,
even some of the best stucco guys, have a lot of problems with that
this when i get ready to do these i'm going to freehand these,
that i'm looking forward to that, right there because i love doing that stuff and
what i showed beginning I believe we showed. i don't know if the camera will see this, but
there's how we flashed all of this, and we'll have a separate video on how to flash that in detail.
So we flashed it, and I pressure washed everything here because now i'm gonna
grout this in here just a caulking grout and match this right here, but that's another day.
I'll take you around and show you some of the things to expect if you're working in wintertime.
Our job was to waterproof these walls in order for them to get the insulation and the sheetrock up;
you can't have walls that are leaking if it rains, tomorrow might rain, so what we did
is we had to waterproof everything, and yeah there are still some things that they have
to do here. They have to install some windows. They have the windows, they just installed that
vent today, and the garage door is two months out, it's two months out, so I'll take you around here,
and I'll show you where we're at. We went ahead and waterproofed all these walls. That was the
idea, waterproof the walls so that they can come in and keep moving and get the insulation all the
sheetrock done. Yeah, we still got to do this uh electrical box, what they'll do is they'll remove
this, and we'll take our paper up and back and on top and then put a coat of stucco on there,
you could actually see the old finish you know personally I like old finishes, but that one was,
I guess I'll politely say, nasty. It was horrible. Walk around here into the minefield,
and we'll just show you some of the things that we were.
I believe I was discussing when you have existing windows how to flash them properly?
We do the straight flash on the bottom. DuPont makes it, and they're still doing some trim work,
so i'm not some of these windows i haven't finished the caulking because
they, I don't want to be in their way where we're putting the cart before the horse. In other words,
i don't want to do something that they come back and just and take apart, so this here is a
Sika-flex polyurethane caulking, what happens is they're going to redo this
what happens is with this uh caulking here you do your membrane then you shove your
paper in the key these are stucco keys then you take some Sika-flex polyurethane caulk,
and there's a lot of a different kind of caulking if you're going to get one get a construction type
adhesive sealant and that's what you put here uh on the sides for the windows. I remember when we
were working in Tiburon. Come on this way, Jay, watch all these land mines here too. When I was
working in Tiburon, this was 20 years ago, they used to say we have to leave all the caulking so
the inspectors would see what, what we're using. You could use this or something comparable,
but they, I mean, this is back 26, 27 years ago. They'd want to see the caulking we used because
some guys just don't know the right caulking. It's got to last forever, and this stuff does,
especially when you cover it up with stucco. Yeah, they have a few issues like this,
was good. They had a big stump here, and they have to fix the foundation. This is what you
call improvising guys, they came, and they cut the stump out with chainsaws, and then they used
a stump grinder to get rid of it. They hit this plumbing line, and you can see right there where
it's cut you can see right there where it's cut, so they got to have a plumber come,
and the cool thing is you can see where this root grew, right around the pipe, I thought
wow that is way cool, but the owner didn't think it was way cool, when they hit that line, anyhow.
Back to the front here, there's probably a whole bunch of stuff we did not address,
like how to waterproof this area here, but we got our paper down to it Sika-flex did,
and then I wired it and cross-wired it so that we will get no hairline cracking, anyway guys, I
wanted to point out if you see anything that you'd like to witness done, let us know in the comments,
i'm probably going to video these because i'm looking forward to free eye and eyeballing
these right here. Anyway, my name is kirk. There's Jason on the camera
one more thing you see this finish right here. This is what they had, and again i like old-world
finishes, but this was one of the worst finishes or one of the weirdest finishes I've ever seen.
You take a look at that now. That's magnificent and classy.
We did one like that, that's a knockdown dash, and those stones on the front window those aren't
stones; that's stucco. They just made it look like stones. We're pretty good at doing that stuff too.
Anyway, my name is kirk Jason's on the camera. We thank you, folks, for watching, and as usual,
we'll see you guys on the next one. All right, folks, as always,
thank you for watching another giordano stucco video. If you like what we do, please like and
subscribe so we can keep making them, and as always, we'll see you on the next one.