Learn to stucco or fix a failing brick chimney or wall

Hi guys Kirk and Jay here with Kirk Giordano plastering today I'll show you how to resurface this brick here now you might look at this chimney and say wow that chimney is bad but me I look at this chimney and what I see is on a scale of one to ten ten being as good as it gets I'd say this chimney is about a nine and a half what does that mean okay you take the idea the house itself this is maybe a half a yard of cement what's half a yard about a thousand pounds I what's does this chimney weight guys this chimney weighs about five to seven tons that's anywhere between ten to fourteen thousand pounds it's double brick for inside and out design for heat it should last two or three hundred years why did this little area fail well my guess was that the house is about 90 years old about maybe 30 40 years ago somebody walked in here and created a little hole or they had a bush and they watered that bush and with a crack it can go in and prevent or it it can happen where you get spalling water goes in there freezes and pops it off and then it starts this chain reaction it could happen there's a lot of different reasons but what we're doing we're using a 15-minute set so this this stucco right here it sets really quick and plus the brick is absorbing the moisture out what Jane are I already did is we wet this piece of wood here we put it right here as a template or a rod and I went ahead and rotted applied the stucco here and we pulled it up and we made a rod meaning we got a clean edge here this has been pressure washed it's been chipped out then pressure washed well with 3,000 psi how clean is that it's real clean plus I put a bonding agent on here I use weld creep but you guys always call me so where you find well creep well creep is found at the material yards plastering material yards they do not sell well create at Home Depot or low so this concrete bonding adhesive works too so anyway I've got ten minutes to put this stucco on before it gets hard as a rock and I have a hard time floating notice we got here if you're loose with the grout no worries some areas were deep I fished it in there really tight so now what we're doing is we're putting this next coat on and all we're doing guys is just resurfacing it we're putting another layer of cement on it this particular stucco J made about ten minutes ago and we have about I'd say another ten minutes to use it before I get nervous and start struggling and saying oh man I'm gonna have to use a lot of muscle to get it on or floated what I want to do first of all is get the bulk done while I have the board full I'll worry about my corners in a minute first thing is get it all on there and notice I'm pushing it hard guy push it hard okay we take the stucco here and I'm looking at my bulk get the bulk on because if I run out of stucco that's on the board there I want to be able to float it while J mixes up some more so you got a hustle guys when you're working with stiff mud nothing we can't handle take it here and we feather into the existing right here it's called feathering into the existing say like right here I'll show this spot here all right now keep in mind guys it's a pretty cold day but the brick is still sucking the moisture right out of this cement how many different cements are there Oh about 20 right now we're using a cement that dries extremely fast because it's got luminite in it and this is the stuff that when dry it's about 4,700 psi you might say what the heck is that concrete is usually about 25 so this stuff is really strong the psi strength of 4,700 you'll get in about 30 days when you first apply it stucco is I'd say this about 2,000 psi what does that mean to you guys boring stuff but I thought since I know it I'd share it with you means it's very strong okay so what I'm doing here is getting out all of my own pumps and straightening it all out okay we are mud's getting hard and it's about time to start floating this but I can give it a little bit longer before I float because I want to use the rest of this up maybe I might even have enough to finish this let's see here okay the same thing I did over there I rotted this side over here you can't see it so all that rotting means is give it a clean edge we almost had enough just a hair off but that's okay because what I'm going to do guys is finish this little piece here and Jay's gonna mix this some more but before he does that I'm gonna float what little bit we got because this mud is already getting hard so okay how much do I need I need one Hawk right here but for the sake of showing you guys what to do next I'm gonna leave that alone and we're gonna mix up that hawk in a few minutes what I have here is a float bucket I like these green sponge floats with a handle by these at Home Depot Lowe's usually I get them at the material yard by box at a time about a hundred as we go through them and now what we want to do is this corner is tricky so we're gonna take it straight up and go to the right what happens if I take it this way well I pull my own corner off this float is full of stucco right now which when it gets full you just take it off and start over again when I say take it off I mean put it in the water tap it out flip it tap it what I'm doing guys if you don't see is I'll take my hands and just flip this flip it like this flip it and tap that water off now I'm gonna go ahead and get my joint again that way I'm gonna come this way and clean it now this is the hard part for folks who just are learning but for me I can close my eyes and do this I've done so much the idea is I'm putting water on this I'm bringing the aggregate out what is aggregate fancy word for sand Portland cement or Portland is the cement we're using you add sand to Portland and it gives you stucco you add rocks to Portland cement or the Portland cement you get concrete so anyway you see where we're going with this I'm gonna go ahead and show you this joint too because now the joint is tricky the transition that's the hardest part for any of you do it yourself errs and the more water I use the more aggregate I'm going to bring to the surface and yes I'm holding this float flat too I'm not lifting the heel or the toe off it's completely flat like any of you guys who do snowboarding that this is flat right here I'm not I don't have it on edge in other words so now where I go to my joints right here I'll show you how the joints work now what I'm doing is I want to match that finish there and I want it to match where when I'm done the fella who's going to paint this will apply one coat of primer top coat of paint and match it so I determined how much water to use how much aggregate I want to expose down here I'm going to feather this into the existing now that takes a clean bucket of water clean float and this float should be flat you put it flat in that transition I'm pulling this here but I'm lifting at the bottom you can't really see that motion that's how it works guys I'll show you a little bit more Benjay's got to mix me up a little bit of cement I'll show you the transition up here guys okay easier rather than all that bending down all right climb on this guy here all right transition here new to old first I want to wet it bring it back to life you don't you could wet this stucco bring it back to life once you keep bringing it back to life and you destroy the integrity of it all right you see that's how we bring it back to life now I flipped that float just now because we're waters dripping I want to keep that water that water is helping me bring the aggregate out do that and this is the finish that originally was dashed so because it was dashed I'm bringing a heavier float all right guys Jay is indicating that the battery is going we're gonna finish this little piece off and show you the completion when we're done okay guys you see the finished product now this finish when it's primed and painted once should match this guy right here we kind of I look at it and I take some of the sand off I put more here and there and it's just got a match because my buddy Rick here now Rick's been paying forever Rick knows all these little details like say do you paint this the next day no no no why because it's it's got a high alkalinity right now it's like 14 so you got to wait at least a week guys on a whole house I tell everybody 28 days to dry out or cure before you paint otherwise you have your paint or primer blistering ghosting or bleeding you don't want that guy so give it as much time as you can prime it with a good quality primer and paint you're ready to go my name is Kirk Jason on the camera my buddy Rick here great painter we thank you for watching 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 enjoy what we do subscribe to our channel so we can keep making these videos for you my name is Kirk and Jay we thank you for watching and from the entire Giordano family we'll see on the next one