Swirly render dilemma

ruthie_2

Hi, I'm hoping one of you lovely moneysavers can help us with our render problem. Last year we brought a 4 bed detatched victorian house, which is great - apart from the external render. It is rendered all over with a smooth render, but then the plasterer swung his trowel across and made big swirly arcs all over - looks terrible. When we brought the house, we budgeted £6k to sort out the render, but a friend in the know of ours says we won't get much change from £20k if we get the render taken off and redone.

My fiance isn't in favour of redoing it. He thinks it is wasteful as the render is perfectly good. It is, and I don't want to take it all off if there is another option. Today I went out with a hammer and a wallpaper scraper, and was able to chip a swirl level quite quickly. I then thought that if we paint the house (which we planned to do anyway) it would look loads better. I don't mind having it as a project this summer - but would that be a crazy way of doing it - chipping away by hand?

Our surveyor suggested getting an angle grinder to it, but I'm hopeless with power tools and would be nervous about using one. Might an industrial sander do it? Are they a bit less heavy/daunting to use?

If anyone can advise on the best technique for this, I'd be grateful.

Ruthie

owls

2OK ?
your not royality are you,you could plain face render a castle for that.

depends on the depth of pattern it was a big trend in the 80's was swirl rendering.
i suppose you could knock the high spots of and use a couple of coats of masonary paint to cover[ youd have to ask a painter and decorator i dont claim to be one].

certainly i wouldnt advise an angle grinder how would you propose to cover up the marks.

plain faced render is about 25 -30 quid a meter [including mats] give or take depending on where you are and the heights involved scaffolding needed,knocking off etc.

bigdoozer

Not able to advertise here but search Decopierre on youtube, It can be any surface you want including brick , stone or plain finish. Sorry if this is against the rules. but they have done work for me.

ruthie_2

Thanks very much for the advice. I went out again today and had another chip at a few swirls and was able to sort out about a 3m square area in about an hour. Bought some masonry paint and put it on. The only thing is it soaked into the render where is has been chipped away, and whilst it is now flat, you can still see the outline of a swirl.

If we are going to paint the rest of the house, I was thinking it might be better to use a textured masonry paint. Has anyone used textured on their house, and how was it please? I will try another coat of smooth paint too, to see if that sorts it out.

Thanks! Toots

Prairie_Rose

We have used textured paint on the outside of our house in the past as recommended by our builder as the render isn't in great condition and we don't really want (and can't currently afford) to have it re-rendered and it was fine. We also hate any type of swirly artex/render patterns but the textured paint finish is minimal but just does something to cover up any imperfections. Hope this helps.

Regards,

Prairie Rose
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