A new house for your old one: Stucco will make the exchange at moderate cost.

Stucco is something we don't see or hear much about today. Maybe we should. This article, from 1929, makes it sound useful ... and simple.

Perhaps your old house is looking sort of shabby and beginning to let in too much of the summer heat and the winter cold. Yet you may not feel as if you could afford to build a new one right now. Or it may be you don't want a new one, but prefer to live out your days in the old familiar rooms with their throngs of tender memories.

In such cases stuccoing offers the comfort and attractiveness of a new house, with very little of the turmoil of tearing down the old house to rebuild it or even of moving into a new one. And while the expense naturally varies with the kind of job done, you'll find it less than keeping a wood house painted and otherwise repaired.

An out-of-date and weather-beaten structure can be modernized by just a few changes and an "overcoat" of concrete. Often no changes in the design are wanted, only something cozier to live in and pleasanter to the eye. Then all you need do is apply the stucco and that's really a simple job. Don't let any instruction book fill you with doubt. The careful way those scientific chaps write, they'd make butchering a hog seem like a job for three surgeons and an undertaker.

First, your house must set firmly on the foundation, for if it doesn't and settles, the stucco will crack. Next you want to nail any loose siding--I'm talking in this article about wood houses, but stucco can also be applied to brick, stone or what-have-you.

Then you build out the door and window casings and other trimmings if you want to keep these decorations with the stucco. Your lumber dealer will sell you specially sawed stuff that makes this an easy job. Or an even simpler idea is to carry the stucco around the casings, giving the neat appearance of a recessed window. Quite a good many do this.

Your next step is to cover the walls all over with a heavy grade of tar or felt paper. Begin at the bottom and run the paper cross-wise of the walls, lapping well and fastening with "furring" strips eight to 12 inches apart and running up and down. These should be metal crimped band iron, made especially for that purpose, if you are going to do a real nice long-lasting job. But wooden strips three-eighths of an inch thick, say ordinary lath, will serve.

This done, you should next put "flashing" around the tops and sides of windows and doors, to keep water from getting behind the stucco and injuring it. A flashing is a flat strip of metal with one edge turned up square to fit against the casing and keep water that runs along the edge from soaking into the stucco.

And now you are ready to put on the reinforcing. Experts on stuccoing say that nothing will do for this purpose except metal lath or a special woven wire weighing not less than 3.4 pounds to the square yard. Undoubtedly one or the other of these is best. You wire either to the metal furring strips above mentioned, which should be used with both, and lap and wire the joints well, using 18 gauge wire. This part of the job wants careful work.

So much for the best reinforcing. Now, if you're a little short of money, or not building for your grandchildren but just want a comfortable, good-looking house for your own remaining years, why you can make out with heavy galvanized chicken wire or small-mesh hog wire satisfactorily. A builder told us so. And we've seen it done and the owner bragged about it and was happy years afterward. If you are going to use such reinforcing, you naturally have put on wood lath for the furring strips. Just nail your woven wire to these with big-headed nails, but nail it well. Concrete is heavy stuff.

The right mixture is one part cement to three parts clean sand, with one-tenth of hydrated lime well mixed with the cement before using, to make it trowel easier and resist moisture better. Mix only what you can apply in an hour. Keep it hoed and use none that begins to set.

For ordinary purposes apply two coats. Starting at the bottom of the wall, push the first coat through the reinforcing against the tarred paper and just covering the reinforcing, which will make this coat about three-eighths of an inch thick. Roughen it with an old broom or something before it dries. When well set, wet it and apply another three-eighths in coat. Your reinforcing is then imbedded in the center of a concrete slab, as it should be to have strength and last. You can color the second coat by mixing five pounds of ultramarine blue, yellow ochre or other mineral pigment with each sack of cement used.

Sometimes, for an extra-fine job, a third thin coat of factory-mixed cement which contains the coloring, is added. Or you can give a pebble finish by throwing little pebbles against your second coat, with a broadcast motion, when it's yet wet. Or you can stipple the last coat by patting it with the end of a coarse brush, or rough cast it with a trowel covered with burlap, or merely finish it smooth with a steel trowel.

And that completes the job. It wasn't so hard now, was it? Not when you consider that now you've got a house which is pretty nearly weatherproof and which needs no painting and yet will always look comely and inviting.

Three common mistakes

This article is written to answer a basketful of letters asking the editors about stuccoing old houses. We hope it makes the work clear and as simple as it really is. Some folks have a prejudice against stucco because they got poor results or saw a fizzle somewhere from a poor job. The three commonest mistakes to guard against are wrong proportioning of the stucco mixture, not applying it quickly enough after it's mixed, and putting it onto flimsy reinforcing or a tottery frame-work that settles and cracks.

Autumn is a better time of the year to apply stucco than when the weather is real hot and dry. Cool weather isn't so good either. Don't try stuccoing at all when the temperature drops to freezing.