Before and After Photos--Pg. #2
Warning! If you are planning on buying an adobe home or selling your adobe home, you must read this!
Roof coating information and photos
Before and after photos page #2
The above left photo shows Roy Spears, the Adobe Master, at work on a large crack. Note chisel in hand. The middle photo shows debris pile at base of wall and some adobe repairs in progress at the upper left portion of the house. The final photo shows the wall and crack in the final mode. We still had to touch up the mortar joints in the crack to blend in with the rest of the wall, but you can see the dramatic difference. (Please click on each photo to enlarge.)
The above "before" and "after" photos are from a very interesting and unique project, one you don't see too much. This is an old adobe home, made from the old, mud and straw adobe. The adobe has been covered by a lime or cement base stucco that was then, years later, was "Tuff-Texed" by a company that at one time did a big business in Tucson. The photo on the upper left shows where we scraped away the loose Tuff-Tex from off the wall, exposing the original stucco coat. The window is covered with plastic. Unfortunately, I am much better at adobe restoration than photography, so these photos don't show the detail of the Tuff-Tex like I would have liked to.
The upper right photo is a shot of the exact same wall after we finished. Again, that photo simply does not do the job the justice it deserves, for it came out beautiful.
"Tuff-Tex" was a brand name for a process that supposedly was going to revolutionize the painting and coating industry in the late 1960's or early 1970's. This company claimed that this "Tuff-Tex" was ten times thicker than paint and that once applied, the homeowner never would have to paint their house again. "Tuff-Tex" is a thick, textured coating that resembles the old popcorn ceilings (some know them as "acoustic ceilings") that many people still have in their homes: it has small to medium sized "bumps" in it. Many people, tired of the hassle of repainting their homes, jumped on this advertising claim with a vengeance and this company coated hundreds of homes in the Tucson.
Of course, their claims were bogus and false, and they soon went bankrupt because of the false claims. Once the problems, callbacks and warranty claims started pouring in, they folded up and went on their merry way. I found out about "Tuff-Tex" because my very own mother had it done on her house and it became a nightmare for her.
What happened to the Tuff-Tex coating was that the company applied it over everything: wood, metal and brick. If they would have simply limited their application to fired brick, they probably would have been okay, for it works quite well in that application. But over wood and metal (metal as in metal drainpipes, metal fascia, etc.) is where they had their problems. Wood expands and contracts, and when the Tuff-Tex was applied over wood, the coating would crack. Moisture would then get behind it and then it would start to peel and/or blister off. At my mom's house, whole sections of this lifetime coating started to literally peel away from the ceilings of her carport...a total disaster. I saw similar problems at other houses, and this house with the above photos was no exception. Metal drainpipes experienced similar problems because metal is smooth and shiny and you need a special paint and prep work for anything to stick to it. The Tuff-Tex seemed to work at first, but inevitably failed as time passed.
This house was a real challenge, as every house like it is. The problem is several fold. First, the equipment. Tuff-Texed was applied with special (i.e. expensive) equipment, not unlike what stucco contractors use when they take their big stucco rigs out and shoot stucco onto homes. The equipment to apply the Tuff-Tex costs a small fortune. Most people don't know this, and when they try to "fix" a previously Tuff-Texed house without realizing that it took special equipment to put it on in the first place, their amateur attempts at doing so ends up being worse than if they had done nothing. I know, because I have tried it in the past--several times. Disaster, I assure you.
Another problem is that even if you had the right equipment, who makes this Tuff-Tex anyway? You just can't go down to Home Depot, Lowes, or your neighborhood paint store and pick up a couple of gallons of it and "do it yourself." Again, it is all specialty material and to this day, I have little idea of where to purchase the "right stuff." Even if you had a gallon of the exact material that was shot out of the equipment in the first place, how would you put it on the walls? Dab it on with a brush? (I've tried that...it looks horrible.) Sponge it on? (I tried that too...horrible.)
In my over two decades as a contractor, I cannot tell you how many jobs with "Tuff-Tex" I simply turned away. Sure, I tried to fix some houses, and some of my attempts were decent, but far, far from perfect. Then, as fate would have it, I thought of a way that I thought would work. To make a long story short, I came up with some basic equipment and a formula for the material that I experimented with over the years that works absolutely fantastic! This house that we did in 2006 came out great, and it was a mess.
This above shot shows the back porch while we were prepping it. We had to remove all the failing Tuff-Tex that was simply peeling away from the walls. Notice the thick pieces laying at the base of the wall. We then repaired those areas that were deep, and the photo below shows the final result. I'm not sure if the photo below shows the textured coating, but I matched it almost perfectly to the original.
The "before photo" below is the other side of this same porch. Notice how thick the textured coating is that we pulled off (you can see it in big pieces on the ground.)
The "after" photo shows the end result. Again, this is the thick, textured coating that we reapplied, like the original. It is not just painted. The homeowners were thrilled at how well it came out, and quite frankly, so was I.
