what is with the stucco trend?

[dan e 1980]

why the heck would anyone buy a 100 year victorian home and cover it with gray stucco?

i think toronto needs an urban fashion police dept. i've seen a few nice houses in weston take this route. it's disgusting!

i wonder what's happening with this......

www.city.toronto.on.ca/le...it006a.pdf

 

[Antiloop33rpm]

Simple answer: Money.

Stucco has been used for quite some time as a way of avoiding costly repairs. Older homes (100 years +) can have a lot of problems related to water infiltration. A lot of times the problems are caused by deteriation of the building envelope. To fix it properly would require restoration masons to come in, carefully remove all the brick and then replace it. Of course with the brick off they are bound to find even more problems hidden beneath the brick wall. So in order to fix water leakage problems cheaply, stucco.

It is not a new trend either. Many buildings in Quebec city have had stucco put over top of old stone work and some stucco work is well over a 100 years old. Same with many colonial buildings you find in New England. Its somewhat disheartening to see, but on the other hand, I would rather see stucco go over top of the brick and stop further damage from happening then for owners to wait around for year and possibley let even more damage add up.

 

[building babel]

Yikes! Stucco's back? It was popular in the late '60's / early '70's in places like Cabbagetown after the "white painting" trend faded. Local architect Joan Burt renovated quite a few blocks, such as the properties you can still see on the east side of Berkeley just north of King, in grey stucco in those days. By the late '70's most of it was being chipped off again. Sandblasting exteriors and taking interior walls back to the bare brickwork took over as hot trends.

 

[TdotTrickyRicky]

Note however that this new trend in "stucco", if we are refering to the same trend here, is actual the adoption of a new surface treatment somewhat unlike the stucco trend of the eighties. The brick is first clad in rigid insulation and the "stucco" product is applied to the insulation. Applying an exterior insulation product improves the R value of the wall and more importantly protects certain wall layers prone to problems in many wall cross-sections. Early incarnations of this cladding sometimes had problems with how the rigid insulation was fixed to the building surface. Oh, and on an aesthetic note I agree it is ass ugly. But then again stucco, or other masonary pargings are the dominant aesthetic in many, if not most, regions of the world.

 

[Antiloop33rpm]

Tdot: Is this common in Toronto to use clad brick homes with rigid insulation before applying the stucco?

I ask because Exterior Insulation Finish Systems (EIFS), which is what most new big boxes use as exterior cladding, also have air and vapour barriers built into them. In the case of old homes I could see this being used when the owner has a serious problem with air and water infiltration (ie draft) and needs to fix the problem without the excessive cost of an interior gutting to fix it traditionally. I have never seen the details of how EIFS would work over an existing brick surface (plus how it works at doors and windows) but it is a very logical way to fix a common problem with old homes. And assuming the insulation wasnt glued straight to the brick it easily be taken off 30 or 40 years down the road after an interior renovation has fixed the problem and would allow an owner to then restore the brick surface.

I dont mind stucco as long as it does by a professional and detailing such as concrete headers and sills are still used. Id rather see stucco than an exterior simpley rot away.

 

[dan e 1980]

hopefully at a later date, one can remove the stucco without too much problems and do a proper restoration.

the problem is that builders are buying up homes in the area and using the cheapo method on these beautiful homes just so they can sell them and make a profit. there are plenty of 60's homes a few blocks away that actually look nice if you fix them up that way sometimes. i don't think the homes that had this converson have too much masonary problems.



can brick and mortar be sprayed with a water sealer so that it doesn't rot any further?

 

[Antiloop33rpm]

It wont really make much of a difference. Most of the time damage to masonry comes from water getting stuck in cracks and freezing and unthawing causing the water to crack masonry even further. To properly fix this you have to fix problem spots properly by reinstalling masonry or in extreme cases taking off all the masonry and rebuilding it as well as repairing air and vapour barrier systems. Bricks are actually designed to abosrb a certain amount of moisture and breath a little so any benefit from repelling some of the water away would be lost by any damage that might come from bricks becoming brittle due to lack of moisture.

 

[adma]

Oh, and on an aesthetic note I agree it is ass ugly. But then again stucco, or other masonary pargings are the dominant aesthetic in many, if not most, regions of the world.

To be honest, I associate this kind of stucco with the "monster home" look, regardless of "dominant aesthetics" elsewhere. It screams out philistine parvenu. And sometimes it makes its way highrise (cf. the French Quarter condos)

 

[GeekyBoyTO]

One sees stucco often along Yonge St. often nowadays as well, probably as a subsidized (misguided) facade rehabilitation program. Ick. Like the St. Charles Tavern (clocktower) north of College...barely two years old and the reno below already looked rather nasty.

GB

 

[adma]

Though at least the St. Charles was already a beyond-recognition alteration of no discernable interest. So if stucco goeth anywhere, it's places like that.

Otherwise, it's the modern version of aluminum siding/Angelstone/decorative metal screens/etc (the whole spectrum of the last half century of misguided facade alterin')

 

[wyliepoon]

I personally don't mind stucco/EIFS on new buildings (which I think has something to do with making buildings look like they're from the US Southwest esp. California), but I agree that it's a disgrace that old buildings are getting the treatment.

The Ryerson Theatre School has a nice Art Deco facade facing Gerrard Street, but look at the back and you'll see the shape of the old Ontario College of Pharmacy (?) covered in white. There's an ugly parking lot and dumpsters there... very uncool.

 

[fiendishlibrarian]

Few of those new Willowdale superhouses I mentioned in another thread uses brick. It's all stucco, and it's all crap. As I write this yet another original neighbourhood postwar house on my street was taken down, no doubt for another stucco shitbox.

 

[mark simpson]

Don't most of those Willowdale monsters use primarily pre-cast (faux stone blocks) over stucco?


Not as much profit in repairing/restoration as in recladding/renovation - and because of this the message from the industry has always being new is always better

 

[scarberiankhatru]

Stucco on the top half of a house, with faux brick on the bottom, is also popular - like it's replacing the aluminum siding on top, real brick on bottom combo that was big in the 70s and 80s. I used to see it mainly on renovated houses in the North Toronto area but now I see it anywhere that people have more money than good taste.

 

[TdotTrickyRicky]

"Tdot: Is this common in Toronto to use clad brick homes with rigid insulation before applying the stucco?

I ask because Exterior Insulation Finish Systems (EIFS), which is what most new big boxes use as exterior cladding, also have air and vapour barriers built into them."

I am no expert on this subject, but anecdotally I have never seen a new stucco wall go up without it being some sort of EIFS system, if not perhaps as cadillac as what is put up on commercial. I am under the understanding that 80's style exterior stucco has essentially been abandoned due to it's poor to terrible durability. While our extreme temperatures are one reason, I suspect our generally low quality residential stock allow too much distortion of walls and movement of foundations. I say this because stucco or mortar is traditionally used to clad many buildings in europe even at high altittude, but the buildings themselves are solid concrete or masonary structures built to last 500 years.