Howdy folks, kirk, and Jason here, with another tip of the day. It's about styrofoam, we have done some
styrofoam videos, but we get a lot of comments people talking about you should have left the
nails or why didn't you leave the nails in why do you embed them i'm going to explain that.
Old man whitey and I like 35 years ago. We did work on the waterfront in San Francisco
the wharf. He told me some things that are quite interesting which, I'll tell you
folks, because if you're going to hang styrofoam molds guys around windows and doors, you should
know this, because it's kind of important. um I'm going to explain a couple things guys too, because
we've been doing this forever, in fact, 35 years ago we did a house that was on a cover of a magazine,
and we got to the job, I was partners with another guy, we had a large crew,
and they had styrofoam, just like this, except it wasn't pre-coated, and i thought wow, how
Are we going to hang all that? It filled up a driveway 10 feet high and the guy says, well in my garage,
I have more, three-car garage the whole thing was full to the top, and i thought, oh man, you bought it
it's not even coated. It took me and eight other guys about 30 days to hang all that. Because we
had to pre-coat it. So i want to explain something to you if you're going to do this guys. Always buy
your molds pre-coated and what does that mean? It means they take this fiberglass mesh tape, they
put it on it, then they put a coat of, "Poly -Bond," on it. I'll explain that too, in a second, and
if you're gonna cut this stuff guys, you see all these loose fibers, these loose fibers, we found
out the hard way 35 years ago. That you cannot use a wood blade you need a blade a masonry blade and
when you do start to cut these you turn that the blade on, let it go to full RPMs like this.
Now now you run these through.
What happens if you don't allow full RPMs? It'll shred this, and it'll take you instead of uh say
10 minutes to hang one, it'll take you, well it'll still take 10 minutes, but all the fibers will be
everywhere and that now you're looking at hours to cover the fibers because they loosen up. Anyway uh
always explain something else, guys. How do you adhere these? You would adhere it with this stuff here, this is "Poly-Bond," this is made by La Habra.
You can only buy Poly-Bond from a plastering yard such as "Westside Building Materials, there's a lot of
plastering yards, "Poly-Bond," is a cementitious adhesive, this is what it looks like,
now guys you, you mix this stuff up, then you slack it. What does that mean? You got to
wait about 15 minutes and then you re-temp it you remix it again, those are the rules guys.
So if you're gonna hang styrofoam molds the most important thing is get them pre-coated,
and get the right cementitious adhesive. So Jay and I gonna go up top here, and
the fella at first says, well gee kirk, I'm going to paint this. I'm not putting the molds.
We thought cool, so then he says will after I paint it, would you guys set the molds? I
thought i don't really like doing molds, they're a drag, but i said you can't put the cart before
the horse, you should hang the molds first and then paint it so that's what we're going to do.
Today we're going to hang these and i'm going to explain why you leave the nails in, and don't worry
about rust, you see if this was, the terracotta roof right there it leaks, it bleeds and so it
hits the styrofoam, and it bleeds, and if you have nails in it and they're not embedded and then
the "Poly-Bond," over that the nail can rust, how do you have a galvanized nail rust? The same way a
corner rust, that's galvanized? You hit the nail with a hammer that removes the galvanization.
For corners the same thing where you, you go over and over with stucco, it removes some of the
galvanization and then you can see rust coming through, after 10 years. we're going to show you how
to prevent that too because I always get people, they say kirk, my corners are rusting and these
styrofoam is bleeding like this, but this isn't nail rust, this is the bleeding from the tile.
Anyway we're going to get up there, cover these windows and we're going to set a few of these.
I'll explain why and how to cover the nails. Okay, guys
we're going to show you how we attach these guys, but first i want to comment on something
the guy who we did that job for 35 years ago, for all you young guys who just got licensed,
watch who you work for, if you got a license and you're just newly, you're happy and all that, there
are a lot of sharks out there, this particular fellow who saved a lot of money and had us put on
molds after we bid the job, he sued us too. That's some negative crap which i don't go into, but
all we did was, we hang styrofoam all over his house, he had a castle up on a hill in Tiburon.
This jerk sued us for $25,000. and he won. But we never did the last scratch of brown
he found somebody foolish enough, that was young, who would be foolish enough to attach all the
styrofoam, do all that, our guys made about 300 a day. Me and my partner at the time made about
50 a day because it took 30 days, and get this get this, I got a call a month ago and Jason was at the
house, he said hey dad some guy called you and said he remembers working with you and that you were
a tall guy with red hair and maybe it's white by now, and i thought, unbelievable, he actually called
me back 30 years later, and he says hey kirk, I don't know if you remember me, blah blah blah, would you do some
work for me? I wanted to pick up the phone and tell him what I really felt, but I thought
don't even give him that satisfaction, let it go just don't return the call, so all you young guys
they're sharks out there and you got to watch those kinds of people, I only bring that up because
we were just talking about it and i thought, wow. Okay, guys, getting back to reality here, what i'm
doing is i'm putting this, Poly-Bond on here and if it's stiff, that's, okay. If it's soupy, that's, okay.
and what we did is, Jay and I, we already did this one and I need two guys to do a radius.
I can't do that radius or the sill by myself. But i can do these by myself. What you do
is you put your your, Poly-Bond on there, you can you want to go about a a quarter inch
thick, you could, you could kind of pyramid it in the center but after you do, do that here's,
here's what we do, now I butter my joints too. like the top these right here, we butter them
because we don't want a hairline crack here, if you don't butter them um they'll get a hairline crack.
Then after you got it where you kind of want it, how many of you guys have ever set tile?
you know if you set tile you notch them, so that it adheres better.
A scratcher or a tile trowel now you can just do this guys,
now it will adhere better, now when i was talking earlier about adhering, I had a buddy of mine
also here in San Francisco. He did some styrofoam and what you want to do is get
getting off that story what you want to do is shake it a little bit, shake it,
shake it, shake it, and now it's adhered. What i will do is put one nail in this,
one nail only guys, and i'm, i'm next to the window, so i'm on a stud
I want it on a stud. I don't want it in the center or in the field
I'll put that then I'll take a nail punch
this right here, so i don't break my fingers and i just tap it in.
Okay, now okay that's embedded.
That's okay but anyway, getting back to my buddy he's a 52-year uh stucco contractor,
in San Francisco. Okay, he called me about eight months ago he said, "kirk, I got a problem maybe you could help me
with a solution?" I said what's the problem? he said we hung a bunch of molds about nine years ago
and through that humongous storm, we just had three of them fell off. I said what's the problem, go hang
them go reattach them. This is the problem is it's a five-story building and it's all finished now
and the scaffold alone is twenty thousand dollars uh because it's a finished building.
I said, well where'd you put them? He says, the top. So, I said well go on top of the building and reach down.
he said they're four feet from the, from the rooftop from the parapet. I thought oh
man, I said, you got insurance? He said absolutely. you might have to tap, tap into that, so why do
I leave the nails in, I leave the nails in because ole, whitey, said, kirk, you gotta leave the nails, just
cover and butter the areas that the nails, once you set them. So i'm going to show you that too.
I got this right here i'm going to use a scratch,r because we want to notch this,
if you just put it on guys with, with just straight mud, it doesn't attach as well guys, you're gonna have
to trust me on this, because I've hung, heck that one job i was talking about
we spent 30 days hanging that crap because he didn't have the mesh on them. Notice, Jay
cut these so perfect with the blade he spun it first, you spin it, get the high rpm
and then cut it, otherwise, you have a thousand of these fibers, hanging out everywhere, you don't want
that guys, Okay, so we're going to put this guy the last one right here, and does this even need a nail?
You want to always shake it a little. But, does this need a nail? No.
But the sill needed one and those i'm more comfortable putting a nail, and I always want to put it into a
stud. I know there's a stud there so i'm tapping it in all right and then, i'm gonna do this,
"get in there guy, yeah, buddy" all right now once you got that done guys, you get,
you get a little bit of mud and that's the last part to doing all of this all right
you see where this, this nail is. You just cover it, this is a cementitious
adhesive, so that's not gonna crack. It's gonna cover the head of the nail. just in case
uh the hammer broke off of the galvanized, so it won't bleed, right here guys
where you have the edge all you do is fill it up you fill it up fill it up.
and this, this will make certain that this mold, won't blow off, I mean
if you show the camera that way we just had a humongous storm. We had a storm
that it was pretty good guys, a serious storm so uh if we have another one, I've never been called
saying hey, we uh we had a mold fall off, because ole, man Whitey, told me that years and years ago.
you don't take the nails out, you leave them in. Otherwise
you create a hole, you create a hole and there's a possibility that it could come off!
I'm only saying that because there are some people who disagree with that, and I say for all you disagree
that's your prerogative, do them your way. But we always leave those nails in it always have
always will. Because I got to make sure that is it stays permanently right here
where i put it. Again you just uh do this I'll show you one last I'll, i'll go ahead and uh
hit this in a second. but not on camera. but here's what you do guys you take either a brush
or a float now this that's kind of important guys, you want this to be this, is what's going
to attach it and not allow water in there you could hit it with a brush like so.
A wet brush or you can hit it with a float this float is wet and just come upward, if it dries
which sometimes drys, it gets away from us, we'll just go over it a few times and the same applies here,
you go over it and then i'm gonna allow this to set a little bit. i'm gonna feather that in but
right here, where the nail is, you do like so, so Jay and I have a whole bunch of windows here, we
started this ah a couple weeks ago and we weren't planning on coming back, but we're back anyhow
we're going to finish this up too. just to get the color close enough and then he's going to repaint
everything, but we're going to put another finish on that. we'll show you that finish.
What it all looks like when we're completely done . Okay, guys uh Jay decided to show even the acrylic
finish, that we're putting on. he was gonna paint he wasn't gonna do the molds but he got gung-ho
I'll show you, something guys, you see this stuff here this is an acrylic, an acrylic it's just
an acrylic stucco. Okay, you see all this right here, i'm just showing you because i can, okay
now that's acrylic and it's about 20/30 years old will this acrylic match that finish? It depends
it might get really close we'll have to go to windows we already did in order to show you
how close it will get even with 20 years old, now this is wet how do i know here it is, kirk's the best.
all right guys I'll just, to prove a point here because last time we were here
we were doing the cement work too. We did both coats of cement and we used the Kem-Set
on here, and it was rough, and people said, hey that's kind of rough, but we were too tired to
go around and show a wall that was set. Right now we're still tired because we did a lot of windows
but just to prove something i'm going to show you guys you can do this,
we spread these all by hand and we spread this too. and now you just take a float and you just
float up. um that just brings the sand out the aggregate. Okay so when this dries right here
this finish is going to have the the same finish will the color be exact?
Of course not, because, it is 20 years old and this is new, but it's going to be real close we're going
to drop down and we're going to look at a window, two windows that we already did about an hour
and a half ago, and you could see it drying very similar to this. Remember this paint or acrylics
dry darker so this is going to dry a lot darker, like the top. Cementitious finishes like a brick
or the terracotta roof right here when they're wet they're 10 shades darker and they dry lighter,
so follow me down here Jay, we're gonna show you this because last time i was too
tired to go all the way and show, but i'm gonna put that video in, in the description of this
all right guys this window here we did it about it two hours ago you can see it's
kind of drying and as it dries darker but I'll give you a better example over here,
we just did this about three hours ago, and as as you can see this window here, it's drying
and as i told the owner, man, if it comes out the the same color it's an accident because we're not.
The color dictates it, the age of the house and I already know this is 30 years old, so we just
put this one on it and it's dry and very very similar in color anyway uh we just thought we'd
point that out because of that video when i did the, Kem-set, there i didn't take the time out
to come and show this and that would have shown how well it, "don't forget to mention that the walls
can be dirty they just had their lawns mowed," Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, too I mean not only is
it 20/30 years old we've had a lot of fires in the last 20/30 years all that soot and everything goes
it sticks to the wall. You mow your lawn guys, you mow the lawn everything the dust,
dirt, grime, goes on it, so there's no way the color can be exact, but here's what you can do.
Just like the Dry-Vit, we're using it's an acrylic stucco, now acrylic stucco they sell the paint
for acrylic stucco, and you paint that on, and it lasts 20-30 years so, if he wanted to get it very
uniformed, he could just roll out the Dry-Vit paint.
Every acrylic has its own paint which when you coordinate both of them they last forever. Anyway I thought I'd point that out this is
Jay's job, so we're just having fun, here.
My name is kirk, Jason on the camera and he helped me spread all this stuff 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 you enjoy what we're putting out for you guys please like and subscribe to keep supporting us
and as usual from the entire giordano family, we'll see you on the next one.