As we all know, pebbledashed houses command lower prices because it's bloody ugly! My question is, how easy is it to take off and return the house to the original brickwork? I would have thought it was impossible without doing serious damage to the brickwork, but is this right? If it is possible, what would be a ballpark cost?
I believe that in some case you can skim over the pebble dashing... if this is viable you may wish to condsider this as it will save you a heck of lot of time and mess!
If iit is, say post-1918, then it is usually done with cement and this usually sticks, making it hard, expensive and damaging to remove - you will end up having to have it redone.
You might be lucky; take a hard piece of wood eg trowel and tap the render; if it rattles or sounds hollow, then it is blown and should come off ok. If it sounds dead, then I would leave it alone. Just don't be tempted to have a textured coating over the top. Even yuckier, and on older houses a disaster (see recent damp thread).
As BenP says, you could de-pebble and skim it but I think this looks even worse.
Pebbledash is for around swimming pools to stop you slipping with wet feet and NO OTHER REASON!!
I defy anyone to come up with a picture of a pebbledashed house that wouldn't look better without it, whether rendered or removed. Partially melted icecream could only be an improvement!
Remember that if the house was pebbledashed originally, then you don't really know what will be underneath, as the builders never expected it to be seen!
Agree that pebbledash is not to everyone’s taste, but if it was part of the original build (is it?) then, I guess, it ought to stay, and as avisk points out the brickwork underneath may not be of the best quality. And on the right house, built (say) around 1910-1930, with part pebbledash and an Arts & Crafts flavour, it can sometimes look quite good. This Design guidance for residential areas in Letchworth Garden City [4Mbytes!] has some quite nice examples of houses with painted roughcast and pebbledash coverings – but I think it’s something about the overall quality of the design that makes it work here, and not the material itself .
There is a house on the road where my parents used to live (its an old Victorian style house in London) that I remember as being pebbledashed in the 1990s but about 7-8 years ago a new family moved in and developed the property - there was a lot of scaffolding and work being done- after a good few months all the pebble dash was gone, and its now got sandy coloured bricks - much improvement! - Not sure if the house was damaged in any way but it 'looked' fine (in my unprofessional opinion . )
But I am amazed at the transformation because I always thought pebbledash could never be removed - that house proves to me that it is possible, although it probably is a slightly risky business (as others have mentioned) that needs to be enrtusted to someone very skilled at such tasks - it was probably extremely expensive and the work took a while to complete, which probably explains why many advise that it is better left alone.
I grew up in a 1950s house with Derbyshire Spar - a silvery-grey colour. And it looks just fine after 50 years.
I know what people mean about the usual shingle treatment but, as Phugoid says, if it was the original finish, then it is worth retaining it. Painting it is all fine and dandy but it *can* cause problems, it must be redone every few years, and is very costly and messy to remove if it becomes necessary.
If you don't like it, don't buy a house with it or else do some strong garden planting which draws the eye and uses the house as a backdrop.
stock bricks stand up to it being taken off not sure about soft redbricks. I walked away from an instruction the other night because the house was pebbledashed too much like hard work to sell!!!
"The greatest trick the Devil played, was convincing us all that he did not exist"
I have to say I prefer pebble dashing to stone cladding - there's a house near me that is stone clad and I have to avert my eyes when I pass it on the bus.
Have to agree - there was a once beautiful big Victorian house opposite my old place that was stone clad top to toe AND had brown upvc double glazing. May take them some time to sell it when the time comes methinks...
I LOVE pebble-dashing - think it looks all Arts & Crafts- so just hope you get a strange buyer like me! Stone cladding, on the other hand, is thw work of the devil...
Many of the houses in a rather posh area of Cambridge where I used to live (alas...) were Arts and Crafts, complete with Arts and Crafts pebble-dashing! Dont' like it myself as it gets so dirty and is so hard to clean, but I can see that it's in keeping with the style of the house.
We live in an area of majoritively 1930s houses where literally all the houses for miles around are pebbledashed. So in that context I find it a bit odd that some consider it to affect the resale prospects so much!! Admittedly it's not all that attractive, but ours is painted cream and I think it looks lovely like that.
It was my understanding that pebbledash was used historically to cover up poor brickwork, so I personally wouldn't expect it to look any better if it could be removed.
I agree Celia Fate, where the house was built to incorporate pebbbledash it's no problem, but when I was househunting last year an agent called me about a house which had just come on in a road I particularly liked so I went straight round to view. My heart sank when I saw it had been pebbledashed for several reasons. The first is that it looked awful in relationship to the other Victorian houses in the road with their lovely polychromatic brickwork, but also I know that render/pebbledash/cladding contributes enormously to incidences of damp in otherwise sound properties. Didn't buy it for those and other reasons. Pebbledash wouldn't put me off per se, but only where it was 'original' pebbledash if you see what I mean!
I've been looking at some 30's semis with pebbledashing and have come to the conclusion that unpainted pebbledash (with yellowy pea shingle) looks best if the woodwork is painted in other than white; if a house has, say, green and cream woodwork, the pebbledash just sets it all off.
If the woodwork/pvcu stuff is white, the pebbledash has a bigger role in the overall look and any grubbiness just looks grubby.
I personally prefer a bit of dirt on an old house; you wouldn't strip all the patina off an old table, would you?
Perhaps you're right, Simon, and the problem is not so much that pebbledashing gets very grubby as that the white woodwork makes that very obvious. So what colour would you put with originally white pebbledashing? (Though it's too late as the relatives have just repainted it all)
After reading Simon’s comments, I had a look at some nearby 1920-30s semis, with pebbledash above red brick, and quite liked those with sandy coloured (unpainted) pebbledash and a two-colour paint scheme - darkish blue for door, porch, and the casement frames, with off-white for the inner frames and parts of the front door. The least attractive had painted pebbledash and all-white painted woodwork, so I guess it’s down to the lack of visual contrast between the windows and the walls – without well defined edges the texture becomes more important, and the architectural style expressed by the window shape has less visual impact. Painting the outer frames (jambs, head, sill) a dark colour and the inner frames (stiles, rails) white re-asserts the window shape and the contrast in colour greatly reduces the visual impact of the texture.
wow what an informative thread - i have pebble dashing on the back of my c 1890 terrace and i hate it. it looks tacky and lots of the stones are falling off, it is too expensive for me to have it removed so i have also thought about painting it but am unsure of what colour. i quite fancy a very pale yellow but the house next door is white so it may just look stupid.
if i was to have it removed what would be put on it to protect the wall cos i think it has effected my damp course?
"pass the hammer junior ~ daddy's got a fly on his head"
Originally posted by Simon TL: if a house has, say, green and cream woodwork, the pebbledash just sets it all off.
You've described my parents' house to a tee, Simon - they had the woodwork in black and white as long as I've been alive (a long, long time!) but last summer they decided to do it the colours it was when they bought the house in 1950, racing green and cream. Looks great.
Their pebbledash is natural, a grey/brown mix that actually looks really nice. Next door have theirs painted and it's horrible - dirty (they're on a main road with a lot of heavy traffic) and all gloppy-looking where layers of paint have been put on over the years.
Main disadvantage to pebbledash that I can remember is that it's bl**dy painful if you crash into the walls when playing off-ground tic!
___________________________________________________________________________ strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government!
Be careful! If you do paint it, make sure you get a paint that boasts that it is breathable; with a house like yours, you need any moisture in the walls to escape otherwise you will gradually build up a damp problem. (Look for some of the threads here on damp for more info.)
It may be cheaper in the long run to come up with a way of pulling the eye to something else - spectacular plants, for example.
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