Stucco for the Home

Stucco is a surface coating made of Portland cement, sand, and sometimes lime. It is also known as “Portland cement plaster”, “cement plaster finish” or just “cement finish”.

Since stucco can be colored with mortar colorants and textured with a variety of tools, it is an ideal medium for dressing up a drab concrete block wall. It can also be applied to a wooden surface, provided that building felt and wiremesh are mounted to the substrate beforehand.

In general, stucco will adhere well to new concrete walls because the surface has an open texture that quickly draws the stucco into the minute pores of the concrete. Since the materials are similar, there is also a chemical bond as well as a mechanical one. Surface preparation consists of dampening, but not saturating, the wall with a fine water spray. You must keep the surface damp while you are working. Maintaining the damp surface is not necessary if you use a liquid bonding agent. The adhesive works even when its dry.

Ideally, stucco should not be painted. The color should be added to the mix so that is becomes an integral part of the medium and will not peel or wear off. Even if some of the surface material chiips away, the color will remain in the underlying core.