May 7, 2008—Stucco scratch coat complete

I arrived about 7:30 am, and was greeted by the sight of the house covered with stucco. This is the first coat of stucco, called the scratch coat and you will see why when you look at a close-up.

 
The sand pile and stack of concrete did not seem to have diminished much but the first coat was complete.
Here is the family room from the inside of the courtyard . . .
. . . and the kitchen/living room corner.
Inside the house, the taping was complete and the drywall crew was starting on the mudding process.
You can see the rounded corners have been eased into the wall with a first coat of mud just at the joint. The short stripes are mud covering the lines of screws in the pieces of drywall and the heavier ones cover the joins between pieces.
Now they will cover the entire wall with mud and trowel it. This is the foyer from the living room.
Watching the progress on the double arch between the kitchen and dining room, you can see how the arches are coming together

Here is a detail of one the arches showing the corner treatment and all the switches. Notice how clean and tidy the holes for the switches are. This shows the care with which was this drywall installed.

It doesn’t seem like that big of a deal until you have seen painters using spackle to patch around switch plate holes that are not so carefully cut. These don’t look like they will need any spackle at all.

I put this picture in because of the wheel barrow in the dining room—sort of an odd nonsequitur.
The stucco guys left their hoses laid out very carefully on the ground until the next coat goes on.
The ditch for the electrical hook-up got a little longer, but it still has to cross the road to the big electrical vault by the rocks on the north side of the guest bedroom.
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