That final touch to your exterior

The exterior of the house is what most people see and remember; it’s the face of the house we fall in love with, whether we are looking for a new home or just taking in the sights during a Sunday afternoon drive. Most of us can relate to a house’s exterior, but few understand how they’re put together, or how the outside and inside should work in harmony.

When it comes to exterior finishes, there are many options you can choose from. These range from a face brick look to a painted look or a combination of different materials.

To create beauty to the face of a house, different designing material such as tiles, slates, paste, painted and non-painted rough cast and face bricks, among different options available on the construction market, are put to use. The method or material one chooses to use determines how the house will appear after completion.

SLATES
A slate is a flattened stone rock layer that can be modelled in any shape and used as a construction material. Mustafa Mukama, who sells slates in Bukoto, a Kampala suburb says slates have different types.
“They are mainly two types of slates. There are those with a thick body and are dark grey and there are those that are brown. They are usually smaller in size but can also be big depending on the purpose they are meant for,” Mukama says.

Mukama adds that slates can be used or aligned on a house as though they are being packed but they can even be applied as face bricks in a spread form. “When they are aligned by a skilled person and in a proper order, by applying cement mixed with fine sand beneath the slate, they can last up to fifteen years and more provided the workmanship used enough cement and sand to bond them,” Mukama says.

TILES
Peter Musomba, the marketing manager at Hardware World in Ntinda says the major type of wall tiles used is ceramic. This is categorised into the polished, non-polished and glazed tiles and are in different sizes of 20mm by 20mm, 20mm by 30mm, 30mm by 30mm, 25mm by 45mm and so many other sizes.

“When you use tiles outside the house, green, blue, brown and peanut are among the many colours you can opt for,” he adds, “You use tile adhesive (tile cement) mixed with water apply it onto the wall then fix a tile against the adhesive to bond together. In case there are gaps left between the tiles, grout is applied to fill them.”

He adds that although wall tiles are good to apply on the exterior of the house, their usage is not extensive- meaning it is hard to find someone that has used them all over the house as face bricks. “They are mainly used on a small part of the house.” He adds that the easiest way to identify wall tiles is they are generally rough on the surface. A 30mm by 30mm of tiles ranges from Shs28,000 to Shs45,000 depending on the manufacturer.

PASTE
Paste is a thick coloured material that is applied onto a wall after plastering. “It is applied just like plaster only that its thickness should not be more than six millimeters,” says Joseph Oryang, an engineer at Century Investors (U) Limited.

Peter Musomba, the marketing manager at Hardware World in Ntinda adds that of all exterior finishes, using paste is the easiest and its price is fairly cheaper in comparison to the other methods.“When changing the design or colour, it does not require using labour to cut it off. They slightly apply more and change the colour and design to get the desired texture as compared to methods like tiles, rough cast and face bricks that first need to cut off,” he says. He adds that a 30kg bucket of paste in any colour costs Shs160,000. It can be used on a -surface of between eight to nine square meters.

PAINT
Joseph Oryang, an engineer at Century Investors (U) Limited says if a home owner decides not to use any of the methods above, painting the wall after plastering is the other alternative and cheap finishing. But the plaster should be given time to dry before painting. “The plaster should not be made too smooth because if it is, the paint may not stick to the wall and it will eventually peel off.” he further says.

FACE BRICKS
Joseph Oryang, an engineer at Century Investors (U) Limited says face bricks are applied on a wall to make it look more beautiful. “A builder has to mix mortar (sand and cement) in the right ratios, apply it to the wall and then attach face bricks. The rough surface area makes it easy to attach and bond with the mortar. They are, however ,aligned onto the wall surface in different methods, which in engineering terms is known as gauging,” Oryang says.

He adds that face brick work is a fairly costly method of cladding. If you choose the wrong type, the surface cover of the face bricks peels off with time. Depending on where you buy them, a piece costs Shs500 and about Shs50,000 worth of face bricks can be enough to cover a square metre of a wall. You can also vanish face bricks. “But for high class house finishing, the face bricks should be left plain as it was manufactured,” Oryang advises.

ROUGH CAST
It is a mixture of sand and cement. Joseph Oryang, an engineer at Century Investors (U) Limited says a builder should first consider applying ordinary plaster to the wall before applying rough cast. “It should not be done immediately after plastering, but rather on different days when the plaster has been given time to dry,” he says. He adds, “coarse sand is mixed with cement to make a more liquefied form and put in a hand operated rough cast machine and spread onto the desired part of the exterior of the house.” He says rough cast is more effective that one bag of cement can cover approximately thirty square metres.

Oryang explains that the quality of the texture of the rough cast is determined by two factors; the rough casting machine where some of them have small blades and others having large ones and the colour mixture in the mortar to be used to roughcast.

CAUTION
Proper coordination. Joseph Oryang, an engineer at Century Investors (U) Limited says when there is no coordination between different workers, a lot of delays and setbacks to complete the house may arise. A common example he says is when tiles are laid before pipes are laid. You may need to first remove the tiles to connect water or electric pipes that pass through the wall.

On site supervision.To avoid such situations, Oryang says it is good to have someone to supervise because each of the workers might be good at what they do but when there is no harmony, chaos is likely to arise. Another mistake people make is continuing with house finishing from where they had stopped. “What happens is that if a builder doesn’t first clean the old concrete before adding the new one, it may not bond tas well as desired,” Oryang says.

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