Stucco

First we wrote a piece about painting stucco, using information from the Paint Quality Institute. Then, we ran an e-mail from a contractor in Iowa saying you shouldn't paint stucco. Today, we're going back to the Paint Quality Institute for its take on the Iowa reader's e-mail. But first, we'd like to turn over the rostrum to Al Kelly of Stevens, Pa., with his views on stucco. Kelly's view, or that of his sainted father, is that paint is best applied to stucco with a brush.

Question: Two years ago, we moved to a five-year-old townhouse. Last year, the builder initiated a project of inspecting all the stucco exteriors for moisture penetration into the exterior sheathing and studs underneath. Many inspected units, including ours, were found to have damage attributed to improper application of the tar-paper wrap layer under the wire and stucco layers. The builder corrected the situation by removing all the stucco, wire, and paper; repairing any sheathing and stud damage; and then re-stuccoing.

Here are more painting tips, this time about stucco, for which I get many, many questions, especially from Philadelphians living in a row that is a house or two short, with party walls that need repainting. I turn, as usual, to Debbie Zimmer at the Dow Chemical Paint Quality Institute in Spring House. She says stucco can be successfully painted by following certain procedures. As with most painting projects, surface preparation is key. "Start by making sure that the surface of your stucco is sound," Zimmer said.

In June 1995, Wilmington, N.C., forensic engineer Glenn Davis received a phone call from a woman complaining that her two-year-old house was rotting away. One of the front windows had rotted out in less than a year, had been replaced by the builder, and had quickly rotted out again, according to Davis. The culprit was moisture. The exterior of the house was clad in a polymer-based, synthetic stucco-like material known as EIFS (pronounced eefs). Gaps around the window frame had not been properly caulked, so water had seeped behind the EIFS and had become trapped.

When Anna Iwanicki hired a contractor to stucco her 19th-century brick-and-stucco buildings in the downtown historic district, she thought she was rescuing two crumbling monuments of a bygone era at a price she could afford. She didn't plan on becoming a test case for the borough's historic preservation law. She hired contractor Robert McCliman, who has done restoration work for 30 years. McCliman gave her two estimates: $10,000 to stucco the two adjoining rowhouses, or at least $20,000 to re-brick their fronts.

The summerlike weather yesterday was ideal for working outside, as these Eugene Striker Construction employees found in applying stucco to a building at 401 Callowhill St. The crew: Steven Goodman, Robert Moffatt and Mark Stoica.

  Here's help from readers for readers - this time about subway tile. A couple wanted to know what to do about discolored subway tiles in their 1930s-era shower. Was there a way to clean them or could they be replaced with something similar, they asked. Jeanne Gallagher of Philadelphia had a similar situation in the tub surround area of her late-1920s bathroom. One thing that finally helped make the job doable - and not horrendously expensive - was to stop trying to match the tile that needed to be replaced (1920s Ming Green turned out to be a completely different shade than 1980s Ming Green!

The first surprise came in February, as they inspected the stucco on a Haddonfield house before repainting it. They removed pieces around the windows and discovered beautifully preserved red brick. Over the next few months, Mark Welsh and his son Ted knocked off 10 tons of stucco, revealing a side of a historic house that hadn't been seen for centuries. Out of its shell emerged the stately home of Thomas Redman, a prominent Quaker businessman who settled in town in the 1730s and owned a portion of the colonial-era building that houses the Indian King Tavern.

Gusting winds rattled a corner store at Seventh and Snyder last month and dropped several loads of stucco onto the street. After the storm was over, and a construction crew had cleaned up the mess, neighbors looked up and saw something they hadn't seen in nearly 40 years - the smoky stone facade of one of the last of the old South Philly movie houses, the Grand Theatre. It had been buried under stucco since the late '50s, neighbors said, when the Grand was converted into a bargain store.

Beyond the soccer fields in Windlestrae park, over a narrow stone bridge, tucked into a wooded grove, sits what has been a township liability - a rundown, 250-year-old, stone and stucco three-story farmhouse. The old stucco - the original, two-and-a-half centuries old mix of animal hair and clay - is cracked and full of holes. The paint is peeling. The windows, some of which are originals, need replacement. And neither the plumbing nor the roof hold water well. But now the township has found renters who plan to turn the liability into an asset.

First we wrote a piece about painting stucco, using information from the Paint Quality Institute. Then, we ran an e-mail from a contractor in Iowa saying you shouldn't paint stucco. Today, we're going back to the Paint Quality Institute for its take on the Iowa reader's e-mail. But first, we'd like to turn over the rostrum to Al Kelly of Stevens, Pa., with his views on stucco. Kelly's view, or that of his sainted father, is that paint is best applied to stucco with a brush.

  Here's help from readers for readers - this time about subway tile. A couple wanted to know what to do about discolored subway tiles in their 1930s-era shower. Was there a way to clean them or could they be replaced with something similar, they asked. Jeanne Gallagher of Philadelphia had a similar situation in the tub surround area of her late-1920s bathroom. One thing that finally helped make the job doable - and not horrendously expensive - was to stop trying to match the tile that needed to be replaced (1920s Ming Green turned out to be a completely different shade than 1980s Ming Green!

Here are more painting tips, this time about stucco, for which I get many, many questions, especially from Philadelphians living in a row that is a house or two short, with party walls that need repainting. I turn, as usual, to Debbie Zimmer at the Dow Chemical Paint Quality Institute in Spring House. She says stucco can be successfully painted by following certain procedures. As with most painting projects, surface preparation is key. "Start by making sure that the surface of your stucco is sound," Zimmer said.

Question: Two years ago, we moved to a five-year-old townhouse. Last year, the builder initiated a project of inspecting all the stucco exteriors for moisture penetration into the exterior sheathing and studs underneath. Many inspected units, including ours, were found to have damage attributed to improper application of the tar-paper wrap layer under the wire and stucco layers. The builder corrected the situation by removing all the stucco, wire, and paper; repairing any sheathing and stud damage; and then re-stuccoing.

Every five years, Kevin and Corinne Cody celebrate their wedding anniversary by boarding an airplane to distant destinations. When the emerald year, No. 55, arrived two years ago, the Doylestown couple dreamed up a 10-day journey to Italy, the birthplace of Corinne's grandmother. And they decided to invite the extended clan - no small enterprise. "Our kids live all over the country," Corinne says of her brood of five. "We go to Italy to get together. " Spouses, significant others, and grandchildren swelled the traveling party to 24, ages 5 to 77. Accommodations were the tricky part - what hotel or resort could fit them on one floor?

The first surprise came in February, as they inspected the stucco on a Haddonfield house before repainting it. They removed pieces around the windows and discovered beautifully preserved red brick. Over the next few months, Mark Welsh and his son Ted knocked off 10 tons of stucco, revealing a side of a historic house that hadn't been seen for centuries. Out of its shell emerged the stately home of Thomas Redman, a prominent Quaker businessman who settled in town in the 1730s and owned a portion of the colonial-era building that houses the Indian King Tavern.

Once upon a time - just a few weeks ago, in fact - I was perfectly sane. I didn't clutch tiny little squares of paint-chip cards in my hand, squinting endlessly at colors with names that either made me hungry or made me laugh. Once upon a time, I didn't spend the better part of countless days studying the 650 varieties of off-whites on color charts, asking perfect strangers what they thought of "buff" or "desert oasis" or perhaps "shifting sands. " Before the search for several paint colors began, I read books.

Sidney Robin, 86, a builder who along with his father helped save the architectural extravaganza of Hollywood, Montgomery County, died of cardiac arrhythmia Aug. 16 at Abington Memorial Hospital. Mr. Robin was a longtime resident of Richboro, Bucks County. Nestled in the western tip of Abington Township, Hollywood - actually 120 homes that evoke Los Angeles during a more glamorous era - was born in the mid-1920s under developer Gustav Weber. Weber, however, abandoned the project, and it went into bankruptcy during the Depression.

The Inquirer invited readers to express their hopes for the new year, and two Philadelphians have created very different wish lists. There is a loud constituent noise clamoring for equitable and adequate public school funding in Pennsylvania. Gov.-elect Ed Rendell heard it while campaigning and repeatedly said he would convene a special legislative session on education funding if he was elected. My wish for the New Year is for our legislators to stop playing politics and commit to dealing with the difficult issues of education equity and property-tax reform.

Dan Aaron and John Sandone are Haddon Township residents on a mission - to make the municipality they have called home all their lives look better. In December, the two men, who either separately or together have bought and renovated four commercial buildings in the Camden County community, opened a fifth - the Inn on the Avenue. For about 65 years, the building, at 124 Haddon Ave. in the Westmont section, was known as the Westmont Inn, a "beer-and-a-shot kind of bar that was kind of an eyesore on the avenue and didn't have the best reputation," said Sandone, the owner of S.R. Business Brokers and Sandone Realty in Haddon Township.