Historic stucco renovation, Capitol Hill Church in Washington, DC

Historic renovation
Capitol Hill 7th Day Adventist Church
in Washington, DC

Another view of the workmanship on this nice old church. The stucco moldings were run in place. A lot of the features were hand tooled.	The old band above the door was falling apart, and had been patched a couple times before.

When in doubt, tear it out.	After the first layer is formed and filled, the bands are formed with 2 by 4's and 1 x 4's and filled in.

The sides are trued up with one by's and white mortar.	Stucco band repaired, just like 1910.
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The columns are re-coated by first chipping them up. This removes most of the old paint and provides a good bond to the old basecoat. If you haven't seen how we re-coat old painted stucco, please click here.	Next, we trowel on a basecoat, cement mortar with plenty of flexcon. Here, we mixed Flex-con 75% to 25% water to make sure these columns never fail. The surface is left rough by scoring with a brush.

The finish coat is white Portland cement and white sand. After the finish coat has set up for a while a neat line is cut between the column and the old wall.	I hope you can figure out what this is. The crumbling, spalling brick are stabilized by dashing on (throwing) a mix of mortar with plenty of flex-con. This is allowed to set up good before proceeding any further.

Fast forward: The chimney is finished with white portland and sand. We now have a solid chimney which should las for centuries.	We are now re-stuccoing the dome. This deserves a lot of attention, so please check back next update.
	A view of the US Capitol from the scaffold. You can see the Washington monument in the background. This is a good size project for us, and will be done in different phases. We're also repairing the inside plaster. Please check back to see more.