Our second color pebble dash job
Washington, DC
The stucco we tore off was less than twenty years old. The reason it failed was it was way too thin. Total thickness of scratch coat and
finish coat over metal lath was about 1/4"
instead of the 3/4" to 1 inch thickness which is a standard. I have seen this practice lately on new houses, and it needs to stop.
No, mortar won't bond to durock. Here mortar is stripped off durock easily. This is another practice that needs to stop..
Bands, columns and insets are framed up by furring over the wall with 2 by 4's. Space is allowed under the window for the drip groove to function.
Metal  lath is put on durock to make sure mortarnever falls off. First we put on a color coat without pebbles.
Color is stucco color from Expo stucco. On our
first project of color pebble dash,(click here), we used paint colorants.
Usually we use grey portland for pebble dash,which is later painted.The reason we haven't done color pebble dash before is that color work requires white portland, which sets a lot faster and may not give us time to finish
the wall. 
Another beautiful stucco project. Color is "Milk shake"from Expo Stucco.