Traditional stucco in Brooklyn, also called hard coat stucco. On a rowhouse the rear yard has no vehicle access, so a three coat job means three separate material movements through your house across roughly ten days. Knowing that up front changes how you plan it.
A Brooklyn rear yard is enclosed on all four sides. There is no driveway, no alley and nothing wider than a person can carry between the sidewalk and the wall being worked on. Everything goes through the parlor floor or over the roof, and on a three coat job that happens three times rather than once.
As a traditional stucco contractor in Brooklyn we plan that route before we price the wall. Scratch coat, then a wait, then brown coat, then a longer wait, then finish. Each stage needs its own material on site, and the practical question on a rowhouse is not how the stucco performs. It is how it gets to the back of the house without taking the hallway with it.
Four consequences of a rear yard with no way in.
The coats are separated by curing, so they cannot arrive as one load. Each stage brings its own material through the Brooklyn rowhouse, which is three trips rather than the single one a driveway would allow.
Around forty eight hours of curing after the scratch coat and seven days after the brown coat before the finish goes on. On a Brooklyn rear elevation the application is a small part of that. The waiting is the schedule.
Floors, stair treads, banisters and door frames on the way through a Brooklyn rowhouse. That protection is part of the job and it should be part of the quote rather than an assumption on either side.
Little sun and little wind is a problem for a finished wall and an advantage for a curing one. Cement gains strength by staying damp, so a shaded Brooklyn yard does for free what an exposed elevation needs a crew to manage.
Front door, hallway width, stair turns, rear door threshold. On a Carroll Gardens or Bed-Stuy rowhouse those dimensions decide what size containers can be used and how many trips each stage takes.
Covering the rowhouse route for each of the three visits separately costs more than covering it once and leaving it down for the ten days. It also means less disruption to the household, which on a job spread across two weeks matters more than it sounds.
Material arrives for each stage rather than being stacked in the yard from day one. Cement stored in an enclosed Brooklyn yard through a damp week is not the same material when you come to use it.
Three things, and most quotes leave out at least one. The number of trips through the house, because that is what the household actually experiences. The protection of the route, because if it is not priced somebody is assuming it is free. And the full duration including curing, not the days anybody is on site. A quote showing four working days for a three coat rear elevation is describing the application and leaving out the ten days the wall needs. Both numbers are true. Only one of them tells you when you get your yard back.
Rowhouse rear elevations run through Park Slope, Carroll Gardens, Fort Greene, Bed-Stuy and Crown Heights, where the access problem is the same on every block.
See stucco contractor Brooklyn for our other stucco work in the borough, or traditional stucco NYC for how the three coat system is built up.
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Through the house or over the roof, because a rowhouse yard has no vehicle access. Which one depends on hallway width, stair turns and rear door size. We walk that route before pricing, since it sets both the container size and the number of trips each stage of the job takes.
About ten days for a rear elevation, though only a few of those are working days. The scratch coat cures roughly forty eight hours before the brown coat, and the brown coat roughly seven days before the finish. Curing is most of the calendar and it cannot be shortened safely.
Three, one for each stage. The coats are separated by curing, so material for the finish cannot usefully arrive with material for the scratch. On a Brooklyn rowhouse each of those is a trip through the house, which is why the count matters more here than elsewhere.
Yes, and it is one of the few advantages of an enclosed Brooklyn yard. Cement gains strength by hydrating rather than drying, so shade and still air keep the coat damp longer. On an exposed elevation the crew has to keep it wet deliberately.
Sometimes, by rigging over the roof or through a neighbor’s yard with permission. Both cost more than the interior route and both need arranging in advance. On most Brooklyn rowhouses the hallway ends up being the practical answer, which is why we protect it properly.
