What can you do with a house thats pebbledashed? It looks awful, very cheap and tacky..

Underneath is lovely red brick, is it ever possible to go back to red brick? Or is it possible to skim the pebbledash and paint over it?

Also how much would you be looking at for something like this?

It depends.
Pebbledashing has traditionally been used by some builders to cover up rough brickwork. If you look at some of the old council estates, rendering was used everywhere to cover up the cheap brickwork as they rushed to build the houses.

I am not a builder. We were told this at school in Geography when we studied local housing tenure.

If the builder of your house knew that the design was for pebbledashing on that particular wall, you might find half bricks, or unmatched bricks of differing shades which needed using up who knows?

Its a 1920's house. the whole row is lovely red brick terrace, except mine :(

Just bash it with a hammer until it falls off!

Seriously, it can be removed. Damp usually gets in at the bottom and lifts it naturally.

The brickwork may need sandblasting or treating afterwards to remove the residue left.

I think painted pebbledash looks better than all red-brick. Most of the semis and detacheds around here, Dore, Fulwood, etc, are red brick with painted pebbledash (usually white). Real stone houses look better though. Having said that in a row of all red brick terraced houses, yours must look a bit odd being the only rendered one.

I have heard that the embarrasing fake stone cladding which ruined the look of thousands of perfectly good houses in the 80s. Is a real problem to remove as it has to be sand blasted to get it, and the gobbo, which sticks it on the house off. This leaves the faces of the bricks particularly porous and liable to make the walls damp.

I don't know how relevent this is to removing pebbledashing. Maybe someone who is a builder can help here?

I've just done my house which had a similar problem. Hopefully some damp may have got in and this will just fall off, otherwise the best option may be with the good old fashioned hammer and bolster - be warned this is effort but worth it so as not to damage the brick as a more mechanical method would. The old render may leave a cement residue which could be removed with a brick acid or the whole area sand/shot blasted. You might find that the pointing falls out with the pebbledash and it would certainly look neater if it was freshly pointed.

Finally it might be an idea to seal the bricks with a silicone based sealant if the facing has got damaged with the removal. If it is a mid terraced with just a front and back i think a fair price would be about a grand for each side.

Originally posted by dudu
Finally it might be an idea to seal the bricks with a silicone based sealant if the facing has got damaged with the removal. If it is a mid terraced with just a front and back i think a fair price would be about a grand for each side.

£2k for what would probably be a days work?! Fair price?!

Originally posted by t020
£2k for what would probably be a days work?! Fair price?!

I'm not a builder either, but i think it'd take a lot more than a day to remove that stuff with a hammer and bolster. I mean, the feathers would get everywhere!!;)

Seriously, having been involved in house renovations in the past, I'd think it would take several days to do the job properly, front and back, presuming the back was done as well, scaffolding hire, sandblaster etc etc ... seems a reasonable price to me

Best thing to do is to knock some of it off yourself, see the condition of the brick underneath and then make a decision as to whether you'll leave it as brick or render it again without the pebble dashing. Until you get some of it off you won't have much of an idea what condition the bricks are in. As stated pebble dashing was used a lot to hide something although some people did/do actually like the look of it :loopy:

My house is a1920's with pebbledash. It was then re-rendered and painted white some time in the 1970’s. I got sick of painting it every 2 years and it was starting to drop off so I decided on pebble-dash as that doesn’t need painting.

If you have house that was pebble-dashed or rendered when it was built then there's very little you can do as the bricks underneath will be poor quality. I hate pebble-dash and rendering and painting but was left with no other options apart from cladding – very frustrating!

Taking off pebble-dash with a hammer of chisel will take forever – hire a power tool and it will take about 3-4 days to do a semi. Mask you windows as well as the falling debris will damage them. A good contractor will do everything for you but be warned it is expensive and there’s a lot of cowboys around.

Try J A Briggs for rendering-he's been doing it for years!

www.rendermaster.co.uk

I pebbledashed an out house once.......

Taking cement rendering off brickwork needs care. In most cases if the brick has absorbed the cement into it, then the two can fuse together. When this happens on removal of the render the face of the brick can come off too.
Try a sharp bolster chisel at about 30 degrees to the face of the brick. Keep the blade of the bolster on the face of the brick and not overlapping onto another. If you are lucky you might remove the render without damage but the face of the brick will be stained. This will need to be removed with a brick cleaning acid. Avoid sand blasting, if your house is of solid wall construction then by sand blasting the face of the bricks you will be removing the hard baked surface. This will result in the brick face becoming porous.
If you are unlucky then the damaged brick will become porous and let in damp. Applying a silicone water repellant might work but will need re-treating every 2-5 years, it does not last forever. There are other surface treatments like painting, rendering and cladding. Remember though if you have applied a silicone repellant other treatment might not adhere on top as the silicone will repell anything wet.

If you do go down the re-rendering route I can 2nd Sheff Bird recomendation. J A Briggs used to do the rendering work on my developments during the 80's and 90's. Certainly knows his stuff.

I had P&J pebble dashing 12 years ago and its still look like he has just done it. I will be having him again when I have finished the inside of my new house. Pebble dashing if done correctly can stop on for years and you don't have to touch it not like rendering when you have to keep painting it etc etc. P&J number is 07803701138 give him a ring you won't be disappointed and a bonus he cleans up after him.

P&J get my vote too.

I like pebbledashing! Got to be high quality and un-painted though. And not the grey stuff that looks like concrete either. Basically, I like some of it. I reckon it'd be a bugger to remove though - and it'll make a real mess!

Paint the pebble dash. You never know what brickwork horrors it's hiding. You could remove the pebble dash and then find you have to spend a fortune repairing and repointing and you might even discover that they've used a mish mosh of different coloured bricks anyway which will look terrible. If yours is the only pebble dashed house on your row, it must be for a reason. I painted mine myself, it now looks all white and bright and cottagy.

What can you do with a house thats pebbledashed? It looks awful, very cheap and tacky..

Underneath is lovely red brick, is it ever possible to go back to red brick? Or is it possible to skim the pebbledash and paint over it?

Also how much would you be looking at for something like this?

move to Totley

The building regulations have changed fairly recently as a friend of mine has discovered. Now if you do put cladding or render on a house it has to be firstly insulated which can be done one of three ways. The first is an external insulation which means gutters, down pipes and window ledges need to be altered. The second is to have the cavity in the wall filled with insulation and the third is to insulate the interior walls with insulated board and then re plastering.
I've spent some time on the phone with a building regulation surveyor which is a council department and it all sounded horribly complex. I've now started to investigate tyroleaning which is a coating applied with a spray gun but isn't liable to need the same insulation to be installed beforehand.
One other thing I discovered was that if a company did render or clad a property and didn't bother with the insulation then the home owner is liable not the builder, so be warned

True, there was a company called manchesters at 37 dot com that did insulation on the outside and all the bits you mentioned ,then this decopierre over the top. Based on 2" insulation finished as bricks rather than flat render. The spray on gear is more or less the same and has polystyrene balls in the base mix. Gives the new Ocotober 1st regs for insulation. BUT if you have cavities and this is done at the same time... QED.