My Dad the Stucco King

When I was very little my father had his own stucco business.  He was extremely good at it and had made an impressive name for himself within the city.  For many reasons he decided to sell off the business and start a different career path.  When we bought the church we really wanted dad to stucco the bottom of the church where William pulled off the old stucco.  We discussed this with dad and he agreed to do the work.

Dad ordered the sand he needed and we picked it up together the day before he was going to do the actual stucco work.

When we got to the church dad asked why William had not put up stucco wire and covered it.  This was totally my fault as I thought dad just wanted William to patch the big hole near the old window.  I am very much a "just let me do it" in almost every situation.  This is something I totally got from my father as when he saw it wasn't done, he decided to take care of it right then and there instead of getting William to do it when he got home from work.  I couldn't even convince him to change into old clothes.

First the stucco wire on the windows.

Then to mix up the cement.  It isn't just a bag of cement, add water and go.  He needed to add the sand and a powdered lime as well as the cement.

Then it was covering the windows that dad had put stucco wire on.  Good thing he had brought out his tools that day, otherwise he could not have gotten the work done. (Two of the three pieces are reminisce of dad's business.  Never know when you will need them.)

 

Once that was done, dad scratched the wet cement so when it was time to stucco it would have something to "hold" onto.

Dad had some of the cement mixture left when he was finished with the windows.  If you know my father, worked with my father, are a family member or pretty much have spent long enough with him you have heard "waist not, want not".  Dad refuses to waist ANYTHING.  It wasn't originally part of the plan but since he had extra he decided to see what he could do with our cement stairs.

Quickly into him playing around with the stairs, it was obvious that he could make them look MUCH better.  He decided that if there was enough materials left over, he would patch all of the stairs.

So dropping off the sand turned into an afternoon's worth of work, and in good clothes!  Day two started around 9:30am.  Dad came over with all the equipment.

Once everything was mixed, dad could begin.  First he needed to put up a base/undercoat of the cement mixture.

When he finished the basecoat, what he had done at the beginning was just dry enough for the topcoat. 

He still has it.  I was so impressed to watch my dad use a skill he hasn't needed since I was little.  He even had enough material to do the stairs,

Everything looks AMAZING!  We could not have done anything like this without my daddy's help.  Daddy-O, thank you so much for taking time out of you schedule to do this for us!  I enjoyed our couple of days working together just the two of us.  And now I have some of your work just for me!  I love you.