Stucco

Keep your eye out for stucco going on the building. First you'll see scaffolding being erected, then the building is wrapped with a black building paper. Next comes the lath, which is a chicken wire material that helps reinforce the stucco along with helping it to adhere to the building.

Following those steps, once all of the windows and doors are installed and water proofed appropriately, the coats of plaster will start to go on.

The first coat is the scratch coat. This coat is the base for the following two applications, and will be the thickest of the three coats. After this coat goes on, there will still be wire showing through in some places. This coat is applied with a machine, that blows the pre mixed plaster on, while workers follow with trowels.

The next coat to go on is the Brown coat. This coat is very important, as it really reflects what the final coat will look like. It is imperative to allow this coat to have enough cure time, and to allow all of the cracks to form on this coat, so that the final color coat will cover them.

The final coat is the color coat. This coat is very thin, and will contain the texture and color for the final finish. This coat gets a lot of hand work to it; it is also very rewarding, as the colored stucco provides a rewarding feeling of being finished.