Beauty is Skin Deep...

We finally chose a colour for the house, and now the the masonry is starting to be plastered over. Below is a picture of the rough primer layer of plaster on the outside of the masonry, ready for the coloured render to go on top. 

Above: West Elevation

Below: The covered Loggia on North Terrace.

The primer is a standard gritty plaster made from a gray cement, whilst the coloured render is made from a white lime based cement. It was important to choose the paint colour for the front walls first, as the plaster render is being tinted to match the paint as closely as possible.

The pros of having the render coloured itself instead of being painted are that it gives the house a more authentic period finish. We will get the benefit of the strong durable reinforced masonry underneath whilst achieving the aesthetic of solid sandstone, albeit skin deep. It will never require painting, and will be flecked with real silica and crush limestone particles to ensure it resembles sandstone as closely as possible. The cons are that if it gets defaced with graffiti One can't just paint over it (hence choosing paint on plaster for the front entrance, but coloured render for the house, which is down a long secluded driveway with security).

There are many different textures and colours achievable with coloured render...

After some good feedback from the previous blog survey, as well as several emails and phone calls from friends, we decided to choose a colour that was very similar to C for the main wall colour, with the window architraves, sofit dentils, wall caps and columns being rendered in a lighter colour, similar to B. The exact colour will not be a perfect match, due to the process of turning the colour into plaster render, but will be very close. 

We wanted those architectural details (the architraves, columns, dentils etc) to standout subtly from the walls, but not have a huge contrast. The top picture of this post shows the effects One can achieve with two tone coloured render. 

Here are some further examples showing the versatility and beauty of coloured render...