External Cement Render

External Cement Render 8-16 Nov 2012

This is a house in suburban South East london.The existing work was a hard sand and cement render finished in a rough "Cottage look "which had cracked and had poor repairs so needed renovating.

I would liked to have removed the existing render and replaced it with a lime render.It has often occoured to me that many of the so called cottage finished renders found in the suburbs were infact originally a wet dash or (harling if you are from the north.) and you can get a nice look with this lime based finish definately worth exploring if you get the chance

The problem with this work was that we thought that if we started knocking the existing render about too much it was so hard it would cause major structural damage to the outer skin of brickwork .So it was decided that we would try to cover the poor render and secure the house as well as provide a decent finish surface to paint on

Firstly we made a sand /cement mix with an adhesive to which we added a crack resistant fibre into that we laid reinforcing mesh.When that was dry, we applied a floating /plain faced render finish.

After we had finished this I applied a white finish coat to the apex at the front of the house. I made up the mix to be applied over a floated background to give a good through coloured finish to external render, not only to save painting but also to make it easier to get that smooth clean finish that is quite difficult to achive when you are under pressure when "rubbing up"

Existing render

Covering existing render

Reinforcing mesh

Scratch coat applied

 

Plain faced render finish applied to front of
 building

Render ready for paint or/top coat

Apex floated ready for white top coat

Top coat applied and finished

Apex finished with white top coat render