The emergence of one coat stucco has changed exterior CEMENT plastering applications.
We all know that stucco has been around since the Pharaohs walked the earth and that our modern stucco claddings are an engineered mix of cement, sand and lime applied in a three coat process. The three-coat stucco process was established as the standard, successfully cladding buildings for many years. Throughout the ’50s and ’60s, home construction began to transition from a block and brick structure to the quicker, more affordable wood framing. In the Sunbelt areas of the United States, the wood frame and three coat stucco cladding became popular. Stucco afforded a cost effective and architecturally flexible home. It was faster, easier and more cost effective to make quoins, pop-outs, wainscots and window wraps out of three coat stucco, compared to brick and mortar or wood.
In the early-70s, the housing market was rapidly extending into the suburbs where neighborhood developments began to form. The demand for these developments was ever increasing and homes were being built faster than before. The popular three coat stucco cladding was becoming a time anchor inhibiting the supply of the popular stucco house. Thus was born one-coat stucco. The most prolific, at that time, and relative first comer, was a bagged product called Powerwall. An enterprising salesman selling surface bonding cement for Barrett Industries in Florida was presented with a challenge: find or develop a cost effective stucco cladding. This author looks back and can point to that young salesman named Bill Nichols as the first successful and most prolific inventor, manufacturer and subsequent distributor of what is now a very large one-coat stucco industry.