Plaster Application With Sensitive Color Design

The facade of a three-storey Recklinghaus apartment building from the 1920s was renovated with expertise and passion. Thanks to a full-surface plaster application, the facade is now well protected.

Photos: Brillux

As is typical at that time, the facade of the residential building built in the 1920s was designed with stucco surfaces. Half of the facade had been plastered with unlime lime during construction, while the other half was painted with an emulsion paint only years later. The ravages of time had left clear traces on the facade, so the house owner was planning a renovation. He asked the Warmbrunn painter from Recklinghausen to implement it. “First of all, the customer wanted an offer for a renovation coat. When I first visited the house, it was clear to me that long-lasting facade protection with just one coat of paint is not possible,”says painter Michael Warmbrunn. "So I explained to the ownerthat only one renovation coat is technically and economically not sensible and that he would not be satisfied with the result. Instead, I recommended a full-surface plaster application to get a homogeneous surface. The customer was convinced and so we received the order for the complete renovation with plaster and paint."

Plaster application with sensitive color design

The Brillux color studio developed color designs with different color variations, which the master painter presented to his customer. It quickly became clear, however, that the villa should again be given a shade of green, since the house has a character that characterizes the district due to its solitary position. “The house is a household name here, people are used to the green. For them it's the green villa,”says Warmbrunn. The concrete color nuances were determined on site with the owner using sample areas that Michael Warmbrunn created on the facade. On the light green shade of the facade, the white stucco ornaments come into their own as jewelry. As a contrast, the base area was given a medium shade of gray.

A heavy soot, the remains of an ivy covering, algae - the facade of the house was not in good condition. “The pre-treatment of the surface was complex and a special challenge,” recalls Frank Komosinski, technical consultant at Brillux. “The aim was to give the facade surfaces a uniform appearance on the one hand, but at the same time to preserve the character of the house and not to make it look like a new facade. For this reason, a silicate system was the first choice for this project.”

Facade cleaning

In the first step, the painting team manually removed the soot from the facade and then cleaned the surfaces with a high-pressure cleaner. From the former window shutters, there were still iron hangers, which were flexed and given a 2K epoxy adhesive primer 855 to provide an adhesion-promoting primer. Michael Warmbrunn consulted with Brillux about the coating structure. “I always wanted to use silicate products. First of all because of the building physics and to emphasize the historical character of the house again”, Warmbrunn explains his decision. Fondosil 1903, a deeply penetrating sol-silicate-based primer, was used for priming and setting and for further preparation. The plaster was cracked in numerous places. Due to the nature of the substrate, we decided to reinforce the entire facade with ETICS powder adhesive 3550 and embed the ETICS glass silk fabric 3797,”says Michael Warmbrunn.

Long lifetime

The silicate system works through the chemical process of silicification: this results in a highly permanent connection between the paint and the paint carrier in every layer of the entire coating structure. The good water vapor diffusion ability ensures that the moisture contained in the component can diffuse to the outside unhindered. "For optimal adhesion and to achieve an even more uniform drying of the plaster, we primed the facade treated with the reinforcing mortar in an intermediate coating with the structure-giving ELF 3639 silicate filler," explains the master painter. This was followed by the two millimeter thick layer of plaster with the silicate plaster KR K2 3631 for a decorative scratch plaster structure.

"As a top coat, we recommended a one-component sol-silicate paint that, thanks to sol-silicate, a combination of high-quality silica sol and potassium water glass, in combination with Hybrid-Protect, offers natural protection against algae and fungi and permanent weather-resistant facade coatings," explains Komosinski. The high effort, Michael Warmbrunn is convinced, has paid off and the result speaks for itself: “The new dull matt, mineral surface is beautiful for the eye and perfectly reflects the character of the house. The villa now has a high life expectancy due to the diffusible mineral structure."

More photos:

PraxisPlus

Products used

• Fondosil 1903
• Silicate brush filler ELF 3639
• Silicate plaster KR K2 3631
• Ultrasil HP 1901
• Briplast facade spatula light ELF 1883
• ETICS glass silk fabric 3797
• ETICS powder adhesive 3550
• 2K epoxy primer 855
• Impredur high-gloss paint 840