Front plaster Lamb - a practical "clothing" for your home
Plaster can be not only the basis for subsequent finishing, protecting the walls from moisture and mechanical damage. It can be an independent decoration of facades and surfaces inside buildings, if it is decorative plaster, which differs from the usual one in its composition and structure.
Such materials include decorative lamb plaster Lamb, which gives the walls an interesting volumetric texture.
The content of the article
Material characteristics
When choosing a composition for the plastering of your house, you need to familiarize yourself with its composition, properties, scope, and also make sure that it is combined with the material from which the walls are built. The basic information about the “lamb” facade plaster is given below.
Composition and properties
The basis of the material, its binder is cement. But instead of ordinary sand, granular minerals - dolomite, quartz, marble, etc. are added to it as a filler and a structure-forming component. These are natural materials that ensure the ecological compatibility of the finished coating.
In the composition of mixtures for external use, polymer additives are also necessarily introduced, which ensure their frost resistance and water repellent properties, so that the plaster can withstand the aggressive effects of atmospheric phenomena.
It’s impossible to make such a mixture with your own hands: for this you need special substances, accurate dosing equipment. But most importantly, it is necessary to maintain a balance between the density of the plaster and the size of the granules of the filler, so that when the solution dries, it does not settle on the surface, but is distributed throughout the volume and remains in place until the applied layer completely sets, creating a textured pattern on the surface.
Application area
The natural composition allows the use of such plaster inside buildings when design requires it or if it is necessary to provide high strength and vandal resistance of the coating. But more often it is used for facade decoration.
Provided that all the requirements for surface preparation are met, the “lamb” textured plaster can be applied on almost any basis:
- brick;
- cement-sand;
- concrete;
- drywall, etc.
And due to its vapor permeability, it is an ideal material for decorating walls of foam or aerated concrete, preventing the formation of condensate inside the premises and ensuring a normal microclimate in them.
When plastering foam concrete on both sides, an instruction must be followed that requires that the ratio of the thickness of the inner and outer layers be 2: 1. This is necessary in order to ensure uniformly increasing permeability of the walls.
The finished coating has a white color, can be easily painted in any tone. But without a layer of paint, it looks quite interesting, so it can serve as an independent decor.
How to apply the “Lamb” plaster
As in the case with any other “wet” finish, the surface is first prepared: tapped to remove crumbling areas, cut off all the protrusions (flow of mortar, protruding reinforcement, pebbles), cleaned of dirt and traces of fat.
Further work is done like this:
- Walls with a roller or brush are treated with a penetrating primer recommended for this material. For example, if they are very smooth, soil with abrasive additives will help to give them the roughness necessary for normal adhesion to the solution.
Tip. Even if the surface seems strong enough and suitable for finishing without prior preparation, do not neglect the primer. The price of the material and the time spent on its application are small, but at the same time, the quality of the finished coating increases significantly.
- Plaster mortar is prepared right at the place of work. To do this, you need a large container and a nozzle for mixing with an electric drill. Water is poured into the container and the dry mixture is poured in the quantities indicated by the manufacturer on the plaster packaging. After the first mixing to a homogeneous state, the solution is allowed to stand for a while to form molecular bonds in it, then mixed again and immediately begin to work.
- Depending on the thickness of the applied layer, 3-5 kg of dry mix may take up for each square meter of the facade.
- Using a spatula or trowel, it is applied in the usual way facade plaster lamb - the video will tell you more about the application technique. You need to work quickly so that there are no visible joints between the already laid out, which has begun to dry out and new areas.
Tip. If you don’t have enough experience, try to distribute the solution so that the joints are in inconspicuous areas: behind drainpipes, along openings and corners.
- The applied solution is leveled with a grater, a special roller or just a spatula, under the pressure of which solid mineral granules randomly move in the layer of the crude mixture, leaving traces on the surface.
- It is difficult to cope with such work alone, since it is still necessary to periodically mix the plaster in a bucket, preventing its delamination and rapid solidification. Therefore, it is usually performed in four hands - one person distributes the mixture on the surface, the second after wipes.
As a result, the surface acquires a characteristic relief texture resembling the skin of a young lamb - where did this name come from. As already mentioned above, it is advisable not to interrupt the work until the entire wall plane is completely finished so that traces of grips caused by a long interval of time are not visible on it.
Prior to complete drying and gaining strength with a solution, it is important to protect the surface from such aggressive natural influences as precipitation, wind, direct sunlight. And also ensure normal temperature drying.
For this work, it is desirable to carry out at an air temperature in the range from +5 to +25 degrees, and after their completion, if necessary, install a protective screen made of film or building mesh.
Conclusion
Once again, watch the video about the “lamb” plaster in this article to consolidate the information received. Decide whether you can plaster the house yourself in such a way, whether the result suits you.
But before you start, still practice on the back wall or concrete fence. If in reality everything turns out to be more complicated than you thought, you can always turn to specialists for help.
