I picked up a listing in December of a Highland Park house  (5528 Echo Street, Highland Park, CA 90042) that had been on the market for several months and had expired.  The owners are lovely people.  The house, although once a great beauty built around 1905 sided in wood with large character windows, had been stuccoed and slidered by investors in the early 1990's.  This happened shortly before the neighborhood was zoned as an HPOZ - Historic Preservation Overlay Zone.

We priced it in the middle of the market and soon did a price reduction but most people who came to the open houses would get wide eyed as they drove up, shook their heads for a moment in shock and drove off without stopping.  I took to standing in the street and trying to guilt them into coming in.  "Hey, you already drove all this way.  You may as well take a look."  I met some great people that way and sold a couple of houses to buyers I'd met there.  However, the owners kept asking why so few people were coming to our open houses.  As tactfully as possible, I informed them that their curb appeal was frightening people away.  Our buyers are generally creatives or movie and television professionals and have a refined sense of aesthetic.  They tend not to envision themselves welcoming friends and family to Thanksgiving in an barren hard monstrosity.  

The owner's daughter, who fortunately shares the taste of the new wave of buyers, and I got the endorsement of a mutual friend of myself and the family's to be the final arbiter.  A very stylish lady who designs dresses in Beverly Hills, she took no time in giving the thumbs up to the de-stucco.

The next hurdle was money.  This family has none.  So, I agreed to host a de-stucco workshop at their house and invite neighbors and all the local historic groups to learn how to do the same to their homes.  We got about 25 people in attendance and in 3 hours the bones of the original house emerged much to the delight of the owners, the restorationists and all in attendance.

I spent about $150 on tools, a couple of 4 lb sledge hammers, flat crowbars, wire snips, gloves, goggles, dust masks, tarps.  We started by taking a few good whacks at the stucco and our local expert, Robin Guttman from two doors down the street, showed us how to wield the tools for maximum effect.

The salient points were:

1) Protect yourself with gloves, goggles and dust mask

2) Hit hard enough to break the stucco but not hard enough that you'll break the old wood underneath. It takes a few hits to get a handle on how much heft to use.

3) Break the stucco in sections.  The chicken wire used underneath came in rolls of three feet wide.  If you can find the edges of these wire rolls, you can peal large sections of stucco off fairly quickly.  Otherwise you can clip the wire along the broken edges of the stucco and peal of chunks.

4) Be careful pulling nails.  The wood underneath can be fragile, so use a piece of wood under the nail removing section of the crowbar to buffer the pressure so as not to crack or break the wood.

5) Be careful on corners and around windows.  Sometimes no firm support is used in these sections and the sledge can sink in unexpectedly.  We discovered that the mouldings around the top of the porch had been removed and just tar papered over. 

6) Be prepared for a forensic study of what you find underneath.  We found gorgeous wood clapboard siding mostly in great condition with a few broken boards we could easily replace.  We also found several windows that had been removed, plywooded over and stuccoed.  Luckily we have resources to find period windows to replace them (very inexpensively) at salvage yards, craigslist, garage sales, street corners and hordes in the back yards of other restorationists.  On the second floor we found lovely scalloped shingle siding in excellent condition.

 The value differential between old character houses from the late 1880's through the 1920's that were stuccoed and aluminum slidered verses those that are historically intact is about $50,000 in Highland Park, Los Angeles, California.  Sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less.  The best part is that its relatively easy to de-stucco and relatively inexpensive.  The biggest costs come in wood repair,  but still that's a pittance in comparison with trying to apply appealing character to the outside of a stuccoed (formerly) character home. 

An important caveat here, make sure that your home actually has stucco over wood before you go knocking away at it.  I generally check by reaching the the door of the crawl space and feeling the wall from the inside.  I also check around the doors and windows if the original trim is still there.  If the stucco is even with the door and window fames, its generally over wood.  You still want to use caution and explore all possibilities before you knock of huge sections.  On this Highland Park home we could see the original wood siding in an add-on bonus room below the house.  It also appeared in one of the pre-add-on interior closets.  We could feel the wood through the crawl space.  That was enough for the owner and I to do a test patch which came out lovely.  Homes in southern California built in the 1930's or after often had stucco siding originally so study the character and framing of your home.

Huge thanks to all who participated in the de-stucco workshop: Robin Guttman for sharing his wealth of expertise, the Echo Park Historical Society that video taped the event and put it on their website, Charlie Fisher of the Highland Park Heritage Trust and the HPOZ committee for lending a hand and document the event, Taylor Negron (comedian) for showing up and beating out his frustration on some errant stucco, and Jessica Benton artist and restoration consultant/project manager for all her advice.

You can view a video of our De-Stucco Seminar at this link: http://www.historicechopark.org/id64.htm

Check back soon for updated pictures of the progress.