Nick Clegg MP, paint, and the pebbledash people

Our deputy prime Minister, MP Nick Clegg, still lives (albeit now part time) in a large pebbledashed house in Sheffield,  so if its good enough for Nick, is it good enough to keep pebbledash on your home or is it time for a change? Should we step down and consider something else?

Nick describes his abode as ” ……….. just “a modest, semi-detached, pebbledash home”………..and  Nick’s new Buddy, Foreign Secretary and good all round “Yorkshire man” William Hague MP, took a great deal of column inches in the papers back in 2001 talking about “Pebbledash people” and the votes he wanted off them in the general election, but who did he mean?

The many normal houses across the UK with pebbledash are a common site, but how can having a pebbledashed house mean that all of a sudden one becomes a “pebbledash person”?? Are their also sub-groups with names like “brick blokes” (!?), or maybe “Smooth render suburbanites?”.

How does an exterior wall finish on our house define who we are?

Well, the first thing that springs to mind must surely be the image we want to portray by the type of house we live in, and more practically, how we care for the exterior of our houses and what we do to protect it from the weather.

Pebbledash originated at the turn of the last century and was primarily invented to cover up poor quality brickwork and construction materials during the housing boom years when new towns and suburbs sprang up everywhere as the older rural industries went into decline, more people starting moving to the cities and towns and more housing was needed.

Pebbledash has been popular throughout the years and many design experts are (somewhat foolishly in our opinion) calling for a revival, stating its relative durability and the fact that many Scottish castles, and many grand “arts and crafts” style houses in the UK have a coating of pebbledash, but today’s pebbledash is often referred to as Spa-dash or spar dash, which is very different and often uses flint chips instead of the normal small pebbles, often dredged up fro the seabed.

Modern pebbledash is much harsher and rougher and if you have ever scraped yourself accidentally against a more recent pebbledashed wall you will now how impractical it can be.

In addition, if you have any alterations to the house, or even have an extension built, quite simply the two bits of pebbledash, old and new WILL NOT match and in many cases you may have to in fact get the entire place painted or wallcoated to avoid any mismatch and to give your house a uniform look all over.

(Here’s an example of exactly that type of situation, a house with badly matched pebbledash, which we transformed with our exterior wall coating system! (CLICK))

In fact a house with pebbledash, which is not in keeping with the rest of the area or the street (think of “Coronation street”) can look not only out-of-place, but can also have a negative effect on the value of your home, especially if the pebbledash is not in good condition and requires repair, or at worst, total removal.

If you are thinking of employing a company, such as NEVER PAINT AGAIN, to remove your pebbledash or to change the look, smooth it out, paint it, wall coat it and so on, think carefully as anything to do with painting pebbledash is often a long term commitment, and if you have it removed, the bricks underneath will probably be in very bad condition, so one must think carefully about what goes back ONTO the wall where the pebbledash or spar dash used to be!

“Ironically, pebbledash that has been badly applied to the wall by a cowboy builder is often easier to remove than a professional pebbledash job!”

The simplest way is to have an exterior textured masonry coating on the wall, using quality materials (such as “Andura tex gard”), which can not only transform the appearance of any pebbledashed wall with an added splash of colour, it can also significantly lower heating bills, lower ongoing maintenance costs, and keep you and your family warm and dry for the whole year!

In addition, unlike pebbledash, a modern, flexible, exterior wall coating does not chip, fade, crack or peel and also stops damp.

With Nick Clegg now where he wants to be, serving people like you and I, will he spruce up his house, get the awful pebbledash painted with something like an exterior wall coating, or do you think he has more pressing matters to attend to nowadays?

Pebbledash as an exterior wall finish can be difficult and costly to remove, a little bit perhaps like how Nick probably feels about the Labour party!

If you have a house with pebbledashed exterior walls, don’t be liberal like Nick and sit on the fence, give us a call today and we can transform your rough, bumpy dull pebbledash into a home fit for a king!

Well, a home fit for a politician anyway!….

For a free quote to paint your pebbledashed home,

call us free on 0800 970 4928

Updated August 2011. It seems Mr Clegg and PAINT dont mix well.

Good job it wasnt a tub of NEVER PAINT AGAIN or he would never have been able to wash it off.

…….and we didn’t fancy issuing a 15 year guarantee on Mr Clegg either!

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