Lisa had stone removed from around a large front window and replaced with stucco to match the rest of her home. Her contractor applied several gray layers over a period of a few days and then added a light yellow-colored layer. She is concerned that the repair may not have had enough time to cure before the next material was applied.
Question from Lisa:
My contractor removed stone around our large front window and replaced it with stucco to match the rest of the house. He did a number of gray layers—possibly three—and then this light yellow one. Each layer dried for one or more days.
Is the yellow layer primer? Did he put it on too soon? Did the stucco need to cure before primer was applied, or cure after primer before paint? He did mention using some kind of quick-drying cement. We live in Southern California.
Answer:
Hi Lisa,
From the photo, nothing immediately looks wrong to me. The repaired section appears fairly consistent with what I would expect to see while rebuilding an area where stone was removed and the wall needed to be brought back out with several layers.
I believe your main concern is whether the contractor covered the new cement-based repair before it had enough time to cure. That is a reasonable question, but there really is not enough information here to say whether the timing was correct or incorrect.
The gray layers were probably used to build out, flatten and finish the repaired area. The light yellow material could be primer, a bonding product, a finish coat or another type of coating. I cannot identify it confidently from the photograph alone.
The fact that your contractor mentioned a quick-setting cement product is important because some rapid-setting materials can receive another coat, primer or paint much sooner than traditional cement plaster. However, it also matters whether that quick-setting product was used for every repair coat or only for the final coat.
If it was used only on the last layer, the earlier coats may have had different curing requirements. Each product and each layer can have its own waiting time before the next material is applied, so knowing only that one quick-setting product was involved does not tell us whether the entire repair was ready.
I would ask the contractor for the manufacturer and exact product name of every material used, including the gray repair coats and the light-colored layer. Once you have those names, you can look up the manufacturer’s instructions for curing, recoating, priming and painting.
That information will give you a much more reliable answer than trying to determine the materials or proper timing by their color and appearance.
Based on the photo alone, though, I do not see an obvious visual problem with the repair at this stage.
