Render – Color or Paint it

Adding meaasured amounts of coloured oxide to the render mix will give you a long lasting effect.

Cheers

Both methods work.

The tradesmen we use prefer to paint over the render. It doesn’t cost extra and lasts as long.

The real benefit is in touch ups. If you get chips or damage it is easy to patch up with paint.

With colour through render you have to redo a whole wall to match colours.

Michael Yardney
METROPOLE PROPERTIES
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Could someone please give me a rough idea of how much rendering costs? I don’t need an exact amount but I have had a lot of trouble find any information about it in Brisbane.

Thanks!

In Melbourne it costs $40 -45 per sq mt applied

Michael Yardney
METROPOLE PROPERTIES
Author of Australia’s leading property e-magazine.
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There are two types of render that you can consider.

The first is cement render.This is the traditional mix of sand,cement and lime.It is mixed in a cement mixer,trowelled on to the wall and then screeded with a straight edge to get a flat wall.It is applied around 8 – 10 mm thick.Oxide of various colours can be put in to the mix,but this is not usually done as it is very difficult to get an even colour.Internally,this render would be covered with a set coat,which is the white hard plaster found on brick walls or on old lathe and plaster on timber walls.

The second type of render which is by far the most popular is acrylic render.If you had a bare brick wall,you would apply a coat of what is called in the trade “coco pops”,as it contains small granules of polystyrene.This fills in the joints,and any holes,and sticks like the proverbial to a shovel.It is only applied about 2 mm thick.If you were rendering a timber wall that you had sheeted with blue board,you would first apply a coat of “patch up” over all the joins.The top comes in a bucket (usually,but is available in dry powder) and is ready mixed from the factory in the required colour.You can choose any colour that can be mixed as a paint for your render colour.Suppliers include Unitex, marbletex, crystaltex etc. It is applied by trowel around 2 mm thick,and is finished off with a polystyrene or plastic float.Darker colours will be more difficult for an amateur to saticfactorily apply.The final finish is determined by the type of render purchased.It starts from a sand finish and goes up to a coarse 2mm.Another product has small bits of marble in it that leave scratch marks in the surface as it is trowelled.There are other finishes available as well from the various manufacturers.A 15 litre drum of the finish coat costs around $45-50.Top coats of acrylic render must be applied to a complete wall in the one hit.You can’t stop and start or you will get unsightly joins.You must go from corner to corner,or to a suitable break such as a door or window.You would need a friend to assist with acrylic render….one to apply and the other to finish.

There are also roller applied textures,but these are applied relatively thinly,and will not fill gaps,holes or brick joins.

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