How to Repair Stucco

Featured Pro: Eric Stromer
Category: Home Improvement
Time: 1:56


ERIC STROMER: Hey, I’m Eric Stromer with another GMC Trade Secret.

Repairing chipped or cracked stucco around the house is a must to prevent water and other damage from occurring. Here’s a stucco patch that was done improperly. The first thing I’m going to do is remove any loose stucco with a scraper and a wire brush. Try to leave some edges of strong stucco for the new stucco to bond with.

Okay, now I’m going to vacuum the area to remove any loose dust. Next I’m going to apply bonding adhesive to prepare the surface. So now that I let my bonding adhesive dry, it’s time to apply my first coat or brown coat of stucco. I want to let that dry 24 hours. This is a very thin coat that just goes right into the crack.

My next step is to take a sponge and gently smooth this out, and then I’ll put a couple of scratches in it so that the next coat of stucco after this dries in 24 hours will really stick to it, and that’ll be our finished coat.

Okay, so our mud is dry. It’s been 24 hours. We are now ready to apply our second and final coat. Keep in mind that before you do, you want to wet down what you’ve done before so that the mud will stick effectively to that patch. And we can go ahead and trowel on our final coat.

So it’s pretty much dry to the touch now. If you can apply pressure to it and it doesn’t fall off the wall, you can tell that it’s now time to work it with the stucco float. So we’re good to go.

Use nice, swirling motions. You make sure that this is wet so it doesn’t pull the material off the wall – nice, swirling motions, blending all these areas together. Now I’m going to work a simple brush here to match these textures. And you are good to go.

All set. We’ve blended all the textures. Twenty-four hours later, you’ll have yourself a perfect wall. A little bit of primer, a little bit of paint, you’ll never know there was a crack in the wall.

I’m Eric Stromer. That’s your GMC Trade Secret.