Hello there folks kirk and jason here with kirk giordano plastering. today
i'm going to tell you everything i know about floating this shouldn't take too long
i know a lot about floating guys i used to float behind two three guys and never had problems okay
let me show you about hydration about how to do a dark color and not have a whole bunch of ghosting
or color variations bleeding whatever you want to call it it's just when you're done
with a dark color it you can see all the marks and you don't want that but it is
not like a painted finish what we're doing first of all i'm going to show you something like
hydration guys because people say well i didn't know you got enough water on a pillar and by the
way guys i'm using this right here this is a lahabra it's a finished coat material and if
you see the bag it says base 200 that just means the color the color is gray if it says base 100
that means it's white and there's about 35 earth tone colors so on the lighter
colors obviously they're using base 100. on the darker colors, they're using base 200. this 1620
that means the sand the aggregate so 1620 is heavy so what these guys want is they say kirk we want
to to make these pillars look pretty and i said no problemo we can handle that because if you see the
the pillars over there they got marble caps and obviously these guys got the view they don't want
anything unattractive here they want some beauty so first things first right here in this they had
a huge hole why because when they poured these they didn't have a concrete vibrator that just
means something that goes in there and it vibrates and it gets all the air pockets out i filled this
up earlier like about four hours with color coat can you fill a hole like that with color coat
sure you can but it's got to be dry by the time you're getting ready to work on it because color
coats are only designed to go 1 8 of an inch thick if you're going a fine finish 16th if you're going
heavy like this uh this is about uh an eighth of an inch okay hydration first all right guys
you hydrate a concrete wall a brick wall um i'll show you about hydration right now
now i'm hydrating that and i'm gonna let that set for about five minutes and here
i'm hydrating this one too i'm gonna let this set and i'm showing you this because a lot
of people say well how do you know when it's done well guys if it's dripping wet
if it's if it's so wet that it's just you put your own mud on it and it falls off
that's too wet and if you notice now we've been in the hot sun today it's about five o'clock in
the afternoon and these pillars right here have been in the sun all day they're about
105 degrees these because it's about 100 degrees out here it's hot it's perfect beautiful i love it
so what i'm doing is i'm trying to cool these pillars off because when i start to spread this
if if it's too dry what will happen is it's so dry i put my first coat on it sucks the moisture right
out of my first coat it's brittle it falls off you can't do that guy this one's already dry right
here so the idea is to keep misting them until they're ready again if if it dries so fast don't
try to skim coat it it won't work it'll fall off it'll dry up too quick oh man that water
feels good it'll dry up way too quick guys so you got to know um when is too much like uh
again if it's dripping like this, you can't put it on there, but this is going to absorb because this
pillar is about 105 degrees as fast as I put this water on it; it's absorbing like this part here
is in the sun this one's dry already so I got to keep hitting it, ah I'm pretty good at this stuff,
so I'm just gonna do it to prove a point now here's another tip guys all right so right here
where I filled up these big monstrous holes those are air pockets I'm gonna take a trowel now and
scrape it off that's just scraping it off that way it's um it'll accept the next coat without too
much of a build up we don't want a huge buildup right there guys now this one here oh this side
is ready the little okay that side is dry as a bone uh I'll start with this one guy, and I'll
taste a few other things guys they're critical on colors, and how to use a float what's a float
I'll show you that in a minute first let me get this on while it's still wet now this is gray
this is a gray base coat actually I told you to add some more color just because I wanted to
prove a point uh I figured the darker the color it'll show all right so this is ready to color
code but it is going to absorb real quick guys because uh I haven't been hydrating it all day
so what we want to do is just put that finish on it, and because we have the corners right here we
want to make those two, so there that's this now, of course, you guys can see this one back here
anytime you got corners that are crooked just build them up like this build them up build them
up if they're crooked but what i really want to point out is um how to use a float guys because
we're doing a job about four months ago and jay comes up to me and says dad you better come look
at what your boy is doing and i said oh man what's he doing jesus well he's slamming the
float the wrong way and it's taking him forever he's going to add an extra hour to our job
and so i said okay let's let's go ahead and get that extra hour to the job and jay says
you mean you ain't gonna go tell him i said i've told this dude like five times i was he's like
well why are you keep working with him i'll say because he's the best hot carrot i've ever met
he may not be able to float well but he sure enough can hard carry he's great jay says well
what do you tell a guy with two black eyes i said i don't know what he says nothing he's already
been told twice sounds like what you've been doing with this guy anyway let me uh grab another uh
scoopful now i want to show you what this guy was doing all day and i just left it to him i thought
nope nope i am not going to tell him again because he'll get it all of us will be there an extra hour
but i'd rather him learn and you're never going to learn
if you're not the contractor i'm the contractor so
i got to point this stuff out like that but at the same time i have already told him this is where
light's going to be right here we just stuck some tape in there okay so now that we have it colored
and again i don't have to go all the way down because they're putting
stuff on the bottom there this is not going to show at the bottom
i'll show you how to use a float and i'll show you how to use the bucket and if you're
doing dark colors guy i'll show you something really cool where all you stucco contractors we
know that if you're trying to match a dark color what happens it bleeds it burns and it comes out
a lot of different colors guys when i was uh set these down when i was working in the union that
was uh that's just a group of guys working uh we had about 15 crews pump guys we were behind
a pump and they'd spray and they had these goofy little pieces of wire and they're doing a dark
color they say kirk use this piece of wire and i said it looks like a hanger why and they said well
we don't want you to do this slam your your float down because if you do that you bend the float
inward like this and that's what my buddy was doing and i'm going to show you that with one
of my crappy floats and show you why you shouldn't do that instead you take the float you do this you
tap it hit it hard on the inner part of the bucket i mean hard guys hit it hard don't mess around hit
it hard because that gives this a curve the right way we don't want to curve this way if you hit it
here you're going to curve it the wrong way then you can't float this so now this got water on it
you got to have water so now this can be floated and all that is is we're bringing out the sand
okay i'm coming over here and i'm bringing out the sand and what's uh
what's tough here is the corners because we don't have a corner eight on it we're just eyeballing
the corner so you've got to pull into the corner if i pull like this way away i take the the stucco
off of the corner we don't want to do that so we leave that stucco right where it's supposed to be
on the corner nothing worse than coming to a job the homeowner see it and all the corners
are shown so okay i'm just going to get this piece here guys you might not be able to see
well you can't see this but i got no choice but to hit it now because uh i'm i'll lose it
and when i say lose it uh that means it'll turn a different color if i don't do this
so again you pull it into the corner guys pull it into it if i if i take this and i pull it
into it well i'm good i got one last piece you guys can't see it over there we're working on
a minefield right here so jay doesn't want to trip and i don't blame him so that that's how
you do it guys but i want to show you something uh kind of interesting okay this we added extra
color why did we add extra color because i wanted to prove a point guys and the point is
when you have a dark color it doesn't matter if it's cementitious or if it's in acrylic if you
have a dark color and you dip that float in like say for example i'm gonna dip my float
in the water and then i tap it out i'm going to hit this twice i'm going to hit this twice but
to prove a point okay now i start here guess what this area right here is going to be really light
and it's going to be dark why i just added water it's like pouring clorox on blue jeans
what's that mean right here that means i got to skim coat it again that's okay i got time i got
mud i got energy i'll show you what my buddy was doing and don't do that but before i show you what
my buddy was doing all you apprentice plasters who are going to be doing this as a profession
if you're doing a cementitious integrated color finish or an acrylic you've got to keep your float
wet and clean but also it can't be say you're doing on acrylic or you're doing cementitious if
you're floating it what happens is the float gets full so what do you do with when you have a full
float that means there's so much um let me use my crappy float there's so much water on this that
you don't want it to bleach the color and you don't want to tap it out like this you can do this
just take a tennis racket now this gets all stuck while because this will accumulate stucco and when
you try to do a float finish or a sand finish we call it a float because we're using a float
but it's actually a sand finish that's a sand finish because it's the sand is brought out
and i'm going to redo that i can already see it bleaching but that was the approval point
you take a tennis racket just tap it like this so each time you're on a big wall say three four guys
big wall two story this will avoid all those color differences and shadows and all that you take a
tennis racket and when i showed this guy about 40 years ago they said kirk there you go again
using a stupid trowel you got the wrong child now you're coming up with goofy ideas these aren't
goofy ideas these work guys because you take that water you will bleach that dark color and that
dark color is put on there for a reason so you you do this and here's what i see my buddy doing
and jay and i did have a good laugh and we were there an extra hour a whole crew
he kept doing this okay now instead of tapping it out here he was going like this
now when you do that guys look at that float look at it and he was doing it all day it kept coming
by and he was because it was filling up with stucco it doesn't matter if you do it acrylic or
a cementitious finish it doesn't matter if it's if it's a dark color there's only one color you can
get away with that's crystal white most people don't have crystal white but you see how i just
destroyed that float and all day he kept doing this he kept doing that and i was watching him
we were laughing behind and i just had time now if you have a float that's crooked cockeyed and bent
like a dog hind leg look at that i mean that's ridiculous and you're trying to float something
well that's where it's been i'm gonna over emphasize the point guys okay you got something
like that you're trying to float a wall it doesn't work so we were watching him i'm thinking man he's
gonna we're gonna be here an extra hour because of this full but i thought i know this and he's
got to learn it and he's got to learn it by making the mistake so i didn't correct him i
already told him a few times anyhow so i thought at the end of the day when everybody's like
damn man that took you a long time i said uh-huh i'll tell you why after but always
if you're doing a dark color use a racquet or tap it on the inside god never never do that
i'm doing that angrily because he kept doing that and he was pissing me off anyway my name is kirk
jason on the camera we thank you guys for watching and as usual we'll see you guys on the next one
all right folks we've reached the end of another video as always we thank you for watching if
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