How best to repair & finish external rough render

[egamar]

I'm getting my house in good order to sell and move somewhere smaller, and the external render needs attention. The whole house is rendered in the same (well almost the same) textured finish and it's been regularly painted.

There's an area of about 10m x 1.5m (the whole width of an extension) that's blown and probably need to be hacked right off the whole side to avoid a horizontal join. The rest of the render has long hairline cracks in many places (but the render itself is sound) and some failing patches around the ends of window sills and suchlike. There are also some cosmetic faults like where poor attempts have been made to match the texture of the extension with the original house and probably some patch repairs which also really didn't match.

I'm wondering what my options are? Should I get someone to:

- repair the cracks and blown patches trying to match the random rough texture and then finish with a textured paint?
- apply some kind of 'overcoat' after repair (Tyrolean finish?)
- pebbledash all or part (part if it's cosmetically better)?
- apply a 'smooth finish' over the whole damn lot (after repair, obviously)

I'm at a bit of a loss how to approach this and I'm scared silly at the thought of what it might cost! I'll have to borrow the money to pay for it until the house is sold, as I need quite a few things putting right (I've made some other posts!).

Does anyone pebbledash these days? Is it horribly out of fashion? I do need something to improve the very bland exterior of the house, and maybe this is a solution, but my taste is often described as dreadful

The total rendered area is about 250m2 less doors, lots of windows etc. All but about a 20m length can be worked from the ground or a flat roof.

I'd very much appreciate any suggestions that I could put to a contractor as well as some idea what type of money I'm looking at.

Thanks in advance

 

[egamar]

Phew, that was an anxious moment. For a while I thought I was screwed by this business of having to upgrade the insulation if I was repairing more than 25% of the render.

Fortunately I had cavity wall insulation done by Warmfront and that will have reduced the u-value of the wall comfortably below the 0.7 according to the nice man in Building Control. Not necessary to do a precise calculation.

That's a relief.

 

[stevethespreader]

I'm scared silly at the thought of what it might cost! The total rendered area is about 250m2 less doors, lots of windows etc. All but about a 20m length can be worked from the ground or a flat roof.
I'd very much appreciate any suggestions that I could put to a contractor as well as some idea what type of money I'm looking at.

Thanks in advance

250m2 is a fair bit of meterage, and if i remember rightly the price for render "or at least what some of the boys on here have quoted" is between £20-£30 a m2 and that wont include all the prep work to your old render, i dont know how much your house is worth, but is it worth it if you are moving?

 

[egamar]

That is the very question I'm asking myself!

I have to get the blown wall redone (say 25m2) and I think I'll just aim at getting a good quality repair job done and pay to get some time spent making the repairs look as unobtrusive as possible on the rest to make sure it looks sound and is sound.

What I worry about is some enthusiastic surveyor telling the buyer he rendering is crap and needs a £10k replacement which would mean knocking £15k off the price! Not to say making the buyer think of looking elsewhere.

Cheers