Home Makeover: Cement Rendering

Want to have the best dressed house on your street? Rendering is a quick, easy and cost-efficient way of giving your home’s daggy ’80s facade a modern makeover.

When we think about updating our homes it’s normally all about the fun interior reno stuff, with little thought given to the all-important exterior. We’ve all heard the expression “don’t judge a book by its cover,” but we all know that people do anyway, so presenting a home with loads of street appeal is abolutely crucial.

Whether you’re renovating to sell, wanting to add capital or just looking for a nice change, you should consider rendering your home. Giving your abode a lovely refreshed look, a rendered home gives visitors (or potential buyers) a great first impression – that’s hopefully long-lasting.

What’s involved?

To help you understand the rendering process (and so you know what your concreter is up to) we’ve detailed the basic steps involved:

• Clean all surfaces (preferably with a high pressure hose)
• Prepare the cement render mixture (a combination of sand, cement, plaster, water, bycol and colouring)
• Use a trowel to render the surface (aim for 10mm thickness)
• Smooth the surface with a sponge float as it drys (1-2 hours after application)
• Paint

Leave it to the experts

While D.I.Y rendering is possible, there are lots of things that can go wrong. “Trowelling” the technique used to apply render, is a real skill and not something that can be picked up easily by at-home amateurs. Put quite simply, if render isn’t put on flat it will fall off. Fixing a dodgy rendering job can be an extremely costly exercise and to prevent excessive cracking  it sometimes needs to be completely redone.

So, make sure you consider the pros and cons carefully before going down the DIY path – or, for guaranteed peace of mind call in the experts!

List your rendering job now.