Please be patient, the 2 questions are coming soon…
First, the background:
90 year old 2 story stucco Arts & Crafts house in very good shape with a few minor exceptions, like the roof over the early 1960’s 1 story side addition. For some reason, when the house was reroofed in the late 80’s early 90’s the roof over the addition (which is essentially an expansion backwards of the original side den/entry way) wasn’t touched. Well it failed, so foolish DIYer I am, I stripped the roof (and repaired the rotten roof decking and a non load-bearing joist) intending to lay new paper and shingles and be done with it.
Unfortunately, the fine folks who built the roof, didn’t flash it into the existing side wall properly, they used what must have been 10 pounds of roof tar and slopped it over the shinges up to about 4 inches on the side wall (although it is a neat and even 4″). The roof line is approx 25 feet here. Oddly (or maybe not so oddly) the original (ie. front part) of the roof is flashed correctly.
Question #1
Should I try to properly flash that part of the roof? It may mean cutting 4 inches off the existing stucco, flashing the roof, and replacing /repairing the stucco.
Question #2
The rear (South) facing corner just above the roof has a small (8″ x 8″) area that has failed and will need to be repaired. Am I better off buying a pre-mix for masonry repair or should I buy type M and mix the stucco myself. Please know that I do not have my own mini mixer and do not (currently) own a mixing trough. I realize the answer to question #1 may have an impact on the answer to #2.
Lastly, I am doing this work myself, mostly because I am horribly poor, and maybe slightly because I am an 5 year subscriber and avid DIYer who secretly yearns to produce more than paperwork.
thanks for your advice.
Replies
The real question is what will your stucco repair look like.
I can tell you from my own attempts at stucco it is a skill much greater than Timberframing or just about any other craft I've done..
I've done some nice stone work and some brick work but stucco looks terrible when I do it.
At 17 feet in the air, facing away from the street and obscured by the roof overhang, I'm not too worried about how the repair will look. Besides, the trick in the last coat is not to work it too much - I excel at not working too much.
The question is whether it makes sense to try to flash the whole back half of the roof, and by consequence have to repair the bottom 6 inches of stucco along the roof ling, or opt for the cro magnon approach and use lots of roofing tar to seal the connection with the house.....
Imagine you are a drop of water.. the best method for keeping that drop of water outside of your house is with proper flashing, sooner or later any roofing tar will fail. At best roofing tar is a temporary solution prone to failure..
Because stucco is so much harder than it looks, my solution would be to remove and properly flash and then cover up my cut with timbers to make it look like it's tudored.
Not suggesting that as the only answer just my take on it (because I hate to stucco)
Is it possible to cut a reglet parrallel to the roof an inch or so above the tar mess? If you can, do that and insert a long piece of flashing into the reglet and cover up the tar. No stucco repairs needed.