2591 New to the forum

Hi regulars.
I'm new to the forum, my name is Sue and we have been renovating an old farm house near Torino di Sangro. We have about completed the top floor but I now need to get the balconies tiled and the railings erected however before I can do this I have been advised that the house needs re-rendering. This seems an expensive process and I would like to know if it is cheaper to treat the exposed stone in some way rather than render.
Does anybody have any information / advice on this, if so I would be very grateful. I need to complete this before April as I have visitors arriving.
Thanks all

Category
Building/Renovation

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Wed, 02/08/2006 - 04:37

Don't know about the cost of rendering the house, but my Italian neighbour is doing up an old building nearby to live in [He's local - so appears to be ignoring silly planning rules on approvals etc - but nobody is bothered 'cos he's Italian and everyone in this small hamlet knows everybody else's business].

I saw him 'rendering' parts of the building. He used a compressor [the type used for road breakers]. He had a 'open box' on the end of the compressed air outlet pipe, which he filled with a spade or two of wet concrete. He then 'blew' the concrete onto the walls - got a great finish. It looked easily 'DIYable'

Might be worth looking into

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Thu, 02/09/2006 - 12:41

Welcome to the forum. Hope you find it as informative as we have done!

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Fri, 02/10/2006 - 03:40

re rendering or even rendering is cheaper than the other leaving the stones exposed option....

why...well if you render the wall you just brush off the loose bits ...make good any bad patches and then plaster it quickly...that sort of work is easy for those that do it very day and is quite quick ....

the leaving exposed stone meansd cleaning off the walls in a much more careful way...they are going to be on view... cleaning out all the loose pointing work and then refilling.... takes maybe three to four times as long and requires slow and careful work including cleaning off at the end of the day....

the other point is that you might well not have the option of choice... structually old houses built of stones with generally a sort of clay filling if they have been exposed to weather without being maintained are very much weakened and it is ofetn part of the engineering rebuild side that structually these walls need a cement render to make the house safe....

there is another sort of in between option ... where youi have veryy appealing stone/brickwork... say around windows or coner stones ...clean and re point these areas and render the rest..

you also have another choice if allowed ..either cement or lime ... as the base for the mix.... cement is virtually not porous and does not allow the walls to breath...lime is a natural product which allows the walls to breath and let moisture escape... sometimes a good option if you have an older property with no damp course...

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Fri, 02/10/2006 - 04:02

Adriatica is right rendering is cheaper but at what aesthetic cost. In beautiful Tuscany the trend is to remove render and then re-point the stonework which is more expensive again than simply re-pointing. Leaving patches of exposed stonework is a little bit twee in my humble opinion.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Sun, 07/08/2007 - 05:44

Hi Adriatica.
Sounds like you are an expert in this area!
I've attached two pictures of my house. As you can see, the outside plaster is not very nice, and I want to take it back to stone. The other picture is a house with exposed stone which is my neighbours house, and this is the effect I want.
Do you think this is possible, and how much do you think this might cost?
Thanks
Andy

[QUOTE=adriatica;20821]re rendering or even rendering is cheaper than the other leaving the stones exposed option....

why...well if you render the wall you just brush off the loose bits ...make good any bad patches and then plaster it quickly...that sort of work is easy for those that do it very day and is quite quick ....

the leaving exposed stone meansd cleaning off the walls in a much more careful way...they are going to be on view... cleaning out all the loose pointing work and then refilling.... takes maybe three to four times as long and requires slow and careful work including cleaning off at the end of the day....

the other point is that you might well not have the option of choice... structually old houses built of stones with generally a sort of clay filling if they have been exposed to weather without being maintained are very much weakened and it is ofetn part of the engineering rebuild side that structually these walls need a cement render to make the house safe....

there is another sort of in between option ... where youi have veryy appealing stone/brickwork... say around windows or coner stones ...clean and re point these areas and render the rest..

you also have another choice if allowed ..either cement or lime ... as the base for the mix.... cement is virtually not porous and does not allow the walls to breath...lime is a natural product which allows the walls to breath and let moisture escape... sometimes a good option if you have an older property with no damp course...[/QUOTE]