hi guys, Kirk and J here with Kirk Giordano plastering, today what I want to is just explain,
cracks in a brand new stucco finish, this is a cementitious stucco color finish, what does
that mean? it's like a brick cementitious means when it gets wet it darkens, anyhow we've got a
few hairline cracks and yeah we did this a little more than a year or so ago, but you want to point
out because my number one call folks call me daily and folks email me daily with gee, I just
had a stucco contractor to our home and month later we have cracks appearing what did he do
wrong well not trying to protect myself or other stuff Okan tractors but he probably did nothing
wrong it's movement movement will cause hairline cracks like this I don't I got the camera can
see this but it's a hairline crack, I'll explain something, in bay farm island in Alameda, there
were thirty thousand homes that all have cracks because the ground is moving, and there were
At least sixty different contractors on the jobs, I kept that newspaper article that I read about 30
years ago specifically for that point, it's not about who did it, it's about movemen,t say can you
see the ground in the sunshine, Jay right here we have the ground the concrete's, cracked like
an egg, if I mean there are certain things that not to again make excuses. That's four and a half
inches on the ground and it's cracked like an egg, where you can stick 15 quarters, side by side here
we have make show you this we have a hairline crack here and what they find one that I haven't
done okay so they like this one for example and again there are many different reasons, why, this
is an addition, they had a house built next door, two stories high, we don't need to show you that, but there's
a brand new house, it's trucks going by, movement the ground is shifting, here we have an addition
and can like say the addition here can we put a an expansion joint there yes, absolutely does it
help absolutely it helps a little bit we've done jobs commercial projects where we've installed 30
to 50 and if the ground moves it is still going to crack anyhow what I'm getting at is we have a
hairline here, what I first did is, I mean there's nothing, there's nothing a fellow like me can do
in regards to a hairline crack, except say, leave it alone even if it's a brand new one because the
paper is still intact and that's what waterproofs a house, if the house is moving and again we cannot
tell the structural integrity of any foundation, we don't know this particular house had two shears on
it, and both of them were done kind of cheesy, but it is what it is. The idea is I'm going to show you
one way right now where we can repair it but will they come back? This particular crack here? what
I've done is I've cleaned it because it's about a year and a half old and I've put a little bit,
of caulking in it and all I want to do is put the caulking in that crack and put my hand on it and
then I use a brush here to score it a little bit now what that is doing is its pushing this
caulking into this crack, you can see it already has fiber mesh tape here, that is about the
best a fellow like me can do and while we're on the subject first thing we do is we laugh it and
we staple off every six inches, every six inches per stud on down with staples. That is approved by
the city seven-eighths of the staple leg is in the stud to hold per square inch the amount of weight,
we scratch it, we hydrate the scratch coat a lot at At least a week sometimes, 48 hours we put the brown
coat, we hydrate that or moist cure it, most times for two weeks, then we apply the color finish
that's about the most a fella can do in my line of work, to prevent or to slow it down from moving but
will they move? yes, is this fiber mesh tape here going to stop it? Again, more than likely not it's
not going to stop a 20-ton building from moving, it's just not that purpose, anyway, we've applied
a little bit of caulking here and we're going to give it a day we're going to come back I'm going
to hose this wall down and by the way, this is a special order on the La Habra lifestyle color, the
more pigment in the color the tougher it is to match the finish. Then what we're going to do is we're
going to come back we're going to hose this down. I just completely drench it, I'm going to apply a
little color here and refloat it into this float finish and that will blend it all in somewhat not
going to make it perfect and I told the folks here and they said Kirk, you were really good, you
explained to us that we probably will get some hairline cracks, I thought I explained to you folks
it's not always I mean for all the calls I get daily on my email that's good and
bad about YouTube, it puts our name out there where folks recognize our abilities, but it also gets me
10 emails per day of folks saying gee whiz I got a house and it's cracking and these guys are animals
they're incompetent, that's not always the case guys, as long as they did everything which I explained
earlier, anyway when we come back tomorrow, we're going to I'm going to wet this we're going to
put our color finish over I'm going to show you a simple way to repair them okay guys let's talk
about color that's what really separates the 10 years and 20 year guys who have time in you really
got to know what you're doing what when we get to this, stage all right we've applied this a couple
years ago what we're going to do now is we're going to match this color as well as the finish
now what color is this unfortunately it's a life style color now those just mean double the pigment
triple, quadruple, sometimes here's a standard what you do is you take a hundred-pound sack mix it in
two buckets put the color in then back and forth get your color consistency is right, so when it's mixed
it should match on the money, to the wall and that matches pretty well there's a technique to this
now, what I'll generally do is I'll spread this area right here, and I'll float it I'll spread this
area and float it, or me seeing that they painted this wall right here and the only time you can see
that paint is when it's wet because when it's dry it blends in perfectly me and Jay, we're so fast at
this that we could actually spread right in here and spread this whole lower wall just as quickly
as doing this right here I want to show you in the front of the house a mottled look all right
guys, I'm at the front of the house I want to try to prove a point here as far as color variations
you can call it model, you can call acid-wash I've heard the term hundred different ways, alright good
hopefully the camera will show this there's an area here that's buried in color it's varied in
color, why is it varied in color, disregard a little bit of cracking but why is it varied
in color? Well it's varied in color because of the lifestyle color instead of a 2-pound color
packet it's a 5-pounds or 7-pounds or a 10-pound bag, with that much color pigment in it. It is
tough to get a cementitious finish like a painted surface. just won't happen and here's a point that
a good point that la Habra makes. They show three houses and every one of them have varied colors
on them, because it's one thing to do a small wall but when you get to a two-story wall it
will be varied, and the houses they show here are varied for a reason, that's the drag about
using so much pigmentation. All right guys back to what I originally was talking about. I'm using
that, but Jay mix me up, with standard colors, you can do this right here. My wife asked me, what are
you gonna do today baby, l said, "brain surgery on a wall," she laughed, and I said, well what we're doing
takes a lot of practice, it's really got to know what you're doing, anyway now what I'm doing is
I'm taking a dry float guys and I'm blending it into the wall now the dry float just brings out
the aggregate, brings out the sand, to match the finish that they already have now say we take it
like so and then we get the texture just right inside now technically with any of the standard
colors this will work fine and some finishes work better than others, whatever Jay, and I are
going to go the extra mile on this, because they painted this you can see that paint right
there, when that dries it's going to well when it's wet you'll see the painted surface, what
we're going to do is because this is the area the worst on the house that had the addition built,
I'm going to take it right in here and come up to here and do the entire wall it takes us an extra
few minutes but that's what I would I, I prefer to do that. okay, what I'm gonna do here is I'm gonna
go over to the paint where they boo-booed. it's tough to do the paint just right guys, all right
so what we do is cover their paint and then we just start from the bottom and spread it I'll spread
two more Hawkfulls, to give you an idea of what the heck I'm talking about, then Jay's going to put
that camera away and he's going to spread, and I'll just do the simple stuff and float behind him, now
again the products we're using is a twenty/thirty I'm sorry oh sixteen/twenty, I just mean just the
heaviest mesh there is, heavier sand, so I'll put that on right here and yes this area right
here, where I just applied the finish to, I'm just gonna disregard that and go right over it because
we're gonna do the entire lower portion of this, what does that mean, what we'll take it, come down
I'll take it here come down I'll go right over what I did, I just did that to prove a point, guys
now what we'll do, I'll show you how I float this, because because of what we're going it's actually a
two-man job, not a one-man job, so I'm going to put this down, Jay's going to pick it up
in a minute and I'm going to take my float and go over where they mess cup with a little too
much pink and fix their own little mistake there and this actually takes some practice. I'm going to
tie into the existing wall, take it and tie it into the existing will there be a color variation or a
difference. Absolutely but that's the nature of are the lifestyle colors. Anyhow, 30 years
ago 20 years ago and even today I still get folks calling me saying, gee, Kirk can you make my
house have the acid wash look or they'll name a whole bunch of things, I say absolutely oh we
have to do is go with a lifestyle color which is over pigmented and use a lot more water here and
there or a lot less depending on how molded they want. Anyway we're going to do as Jay's
going to go ahead and spread this and we'll show you the final finish after he's done spreading
this would be about ten minutes okay guys the drag about doing before and after videos
is you got to come back, and do the after we're actually heading to my sister the Vasquese's
for barbecue, so I thought we'd stop it in real quick ask everybody hey who wants to see what
we've done everybody said not me so we're here anyway this is one of the toughest colors there
is to feather in, but we got it done made it look nice. It's earthquake country guys, we're in
California, shit happens, it can crack, but anyway even the toughest colors you can get it out if you
know what you're doing for myself and my wife, we appreciate you folks watching and as usual, we'll
see you guys on the next one.
Once again folks we thank you for watching and I really enjoy all your comments if you guys like this video, please click the like button down below and also if you
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Kirk and J we thank you for watching and from the entire Giordano family we'll see on the next one