Realized I was painting my stucco walls wrong after 8 years in Tucson

I was using a regular roller like on drywall inside, but a neighbor doing his own place pointed out I needed a heavy nap roller for rough stucco or the paint just sits on the peaks and the valleys never get covered.

3 comments

3 Comments

jenny1984d ago

My neighbor actually did the same thing for me but with my concrete porch. I had this old broom finish concrete and I kept using a regular brush to paint it, and it looked awful after a year. He came over with a 3/4 inch nap roller and told me to use a masonry primer first and then a heavy duty paint. Man, I was shocked at the difference, the paint actually stuck and didn't peel off after a rain. I mean, sometimes you just don't think about how different surfaces need different tools, you know? Idk why it took me so long to realize that flat and rough are totally different worlds.

amyh124d ago

Wait, did you use the 3/4 inch nap yourself after he told you, or did he do it? Because if you used it, you probably already learned the hard way that you gotta really lay it on thick with those rough surfaces. The nap is key but you also need to back-roll or cross-hatch it to get into all those little crevices, otherwise you just end up with a bunch of uneven spots that look like you skipped a coat. I ruined a whole driveway one time because I thought just having the right roller was enough, but I didn't work the paint in enough.

ericcraig4d ago

Man that makes so much sense now. Always figured a regular roller would do the trick since that's what I knew from painting indoors. Never crossed my mind that the nap length mattered that much on rough surfaces. Gotta respect the neighbor for pointing that out though, saved you a ton of rework down the road.