Sanctuary exterior-wall maintenance: a cooperative endeavor

TWO NEIGHBORS WITH SHARED WALLS have been cooperating on maintenance and repair issues. I’m referring to Mishkon Tephilo and the owner of the corner building to its north, Soheil Darvish. A couple of years ago, we worked together on the walls and foundation of the flagstone patio on Main Street. 

Now it’s time to work together on the maintenance of our shared stucco wall, on the north side of Mishkon’s sanctuary building.

(As usual, click/tap on an image to enlarge it.)

Below the jump, this post discusses the main considerations involved. It literally fills in the above drawing.

Two overlapping tasks

Stucco maintenance 

I’m told that older stucco like ours is supposed to receive annual maintenance that consists of two steps: filling cracks and patching holes; and keeping the surface covered up with a healthy layer of paint. Our shared north wall is past due for that treatment.

Color matching

At the same time, we may be matching the exterior sanctuary walls to the “seafoam” green color that is presently on the south wall (in the form of a fancy elastomeric coating). This would be very close to the original color from 75 years ago, when our historic sanctuary was first built.

If so, then the paint that the north wall receives should be that same light green, rather than its present (washed-out) bluish-gray color. We may be headed for something like this:

And if we manage to have the north wall patched up and painted soon — before the stucco degrades too far — then presumably we can use ordinary paint, rather than the fancy silicone coating. Delay can thus be expensive, which makes this a high-priority project!

(On Mishkon’s part, the east wall likewise needs to be patched up and repainted, which presumably would be done at the same time.)

Another blog post features a photo that shows the formula of equivalence that Vista Paint came up with, when our member Roberta borrowed a “seafoam” sample card from the coating manufacturer, and brought it to the nearby paint store. That should make it fairly easy to match the paint color with the existing coating’s color.

Apart from that, I am hoping to leave the logistical details to Fleming (our director of operations) and to our neighbor, to work out together.