Painting the Outside

Painting the Outside and 01 February 2003 Update
	Last week we began spraying on a commercial sealer/primer recom-mended by a local dealer for use on rough finished stucco. When we painted a test area, it was obvious that the product might be a sealer, but it was not a primer. It was most unsatisfactory. We should have used the traditional primer.
The traditional home-made stuff is basically whitewash. It is a mixture of water, lime and cactus juice. The cactus juice acts as a glue or binder to adhere the lime to the stucco and seal the surface. The lime also acts as a primer, creating a white base for the paint. We had used this system on the patio walls at my house a couple of years ago. We got an excellent paint coverage with only a single coat. On our test area using the commercial product, it took three coats of paint to get an acceptable finish. What you see in the pictures above is a home-made whitewash being applied over the unsatisfactory commercial product. Rather than cactus juice, we used the commercial sealer we had ready bought. (The pictures were taken from opposite corners of the compound.) In fairness to the commercial product, it may be manufactured only as a sealer. It was the local dealer who assured us that it was also a primer. No literature came with the product. So now we have one more thing to add to our book What We Learned. The exterior surface area is approximately 600 square meters, or about 6,500 square feet.

The painting begins. The yellow is going to require two coats while the Rosa Mexicana covers nicely in a single coat. The yellow will be used around the patio, the stair wells, and the front; every thing else will be Rosa except the overhangs and the trims around the curved windows which will be white.		The building is so large that it dominates the block, and with this bright paint it will be.... well, hard to miss!