Finish Coat
After the grout sets up, tape on some plastic to cover the brick work for the finish coat of stucco.
Note : When I put on the brown coat, I noticed that the mix set up in just a couple of minutes after I applied it to the wall, the reason for this was, the first coat sucked the water right out of the mix. As a result, it was hard to get a really smooth and even surface because I didn't have time to smooth it out before it got too hard to work. When I had the guy come out to look at doing the finish coat of stucco, he told me I should go back over with another brown coat and even it out. I thought he could just do that with the final coat, but he said if he puts on the stucco too thick to fill in all the low spots, the stucco will crack. So after I taped up the brick work as shown above, I applied another brown coat. This time I wet the wall down with a hose just before I applied the mud, this way I had plenty of time to smooth it out before it set up. If you ever do this, don't make the same mistake I did, wet the wall a couple of time just before you put anything on. Even if it's not hot out. It doesn't matter. I didn't think about it because when I applied my scratch coat over the paper and chicken wire, I had more then enough time to smooth it out because the paper didn't really absorb much of the water out of the mix. After I was done, the surface was much smoother and ready for the final coat of stucco. I just left on the tape and plastic so the final coat wouldn't stain the brick work. I thought about trying the final coat myself but I wanted to match the Spanish style stucco of my house and thought as a beginner that might be hard. It didn't cost very much, just a couple hundred, I think it was well worth it because this is what people are going to see. This project was a lot of fun but also a lot of work. If you try something like this, just take you time and it will work out good.
Here's the color I had matched at Sacrmento Stucco, I cut out a piece of existing stucco from my house and had them run it through a machine to match the color. I cost $25 for thier lab to do the match and only about $3 for a one pound bag of color. A one pound bag of color mixes into a 90 pound bag of stucco.
