Muralis Plaster Atelier · Santa Vela · trowel and line since 1979
A wall is judged at five in the afternoon.
Muralis lays three-coat stucco the old way — scratch combed for grip, brown rodded to a string line, finish troweled in one wet edge with the colour mixed into the coat instead of filmed on top of it. Cures we do not rush, expansion joints we do not omit, and a sample panel cured on your own wall before the batch is mixed.
One crew of five
The atelier note
The atelier takes six walls a season and no more — one elevation at a time, scaffold up until the brown coat reads plumb to the string, and the colour carried around the house in a single continuous edge, because a stop in the middle of a wall shows for thirty years. What we cannot do this season, we draw for the next; the drawings are free and so is the honesty.
Services & rates
The finish ledger
From the atelier’s last season in Santa Vela and the olive benches beyond. The reading is $210 and comes off any work we then do; every line includes scaffold to two storeys and the cured sample panel.
New three-coat stucco$15.20 / sq ft
scratch, brown and integral-colour finish over paper-backed lath
Integral-colour finish coat$4.10 / sq ft
pigment in the mix, one wet edge — colour through the body, nothing to peel
EIFS repair, moisture-mapped$42 / sq ft
foam, mesh and base coat replaced exactly where the readings say
Lime finish over cement$6.80 / sq ft
NHL 3.5 skim that moves with the wall and catches the evening light
Expansion joints & bellows$16 / lin ft
re-struck with backer rod and sealant at openings and floor lines
The wall reading$210 flat
moisture probes, plumb strings, a written programme — yours either way
Inés Muralis
Maestra plasterer, second generation
Taught at her father’s scaffold from the age of twelve; ran her first elevation alone at twenty. She mixes every colour batch herself and cures every sample panel on the client’s own wall — “the wall is the only honest light there is.”
Stucco forgives nothing and forgets nothing. The scratch holds because it was combed, the brown lies true because it was rodded, and the colour reads even because it never stopped being wet. Thirty years from now the wall will still be telling anyone who looks how it was built.
The atelier order
Read, comb, rod, trowel
Four movements, the same on every wall — the only variable is the wall. The reading comes first, because a wall that has not been read has not been priced, only guessed at.
Read the wall
Moisture probes at the trim and the grade line, plumb strings at the corners, and a written programme before a single tool is unloaded.
Comb the scratch
Paper and lath first, then a stiff scratch coat combed horizontal — the keys the brown coat grips. It cures two days, whatever the calendar wants.
Rod the brown
Screeded to a string line until the wall is true in both directions. This coat is the wall; everything after it is complexion.
Trowel the colour
The finish mixed with its pigment through the body, carried in one wet edge per elevation, fog-cured by hand against the Santa Vela heat.
Santa Vela, 2025 — 2026
The wall book
Six walls from the last season — three-coat lays, one mapped EIFS rescue and the atelier’s own sample wall, which is fourteen cures deep and counting. Photographed the morning the scaffold came down.
The atelier, in figures
Three companies offered to paint our tired stucco in a weekend. Muralis read the wall for a morning, left a cured sample panel bolted beside the door, and returned to lay a lime finish that makes the house look like it was always meant to. The evening light does something to it that paint never has.
Colour, cure and joints
Asked at the bench
The four the first visit always raises — anything else, the studio line at the bottom of the page reaches the atelier between eight and six.
What is integral colour?
Pigment mixed through the finish coat itself, so the colour is the wall rather than a film on top of it. It cannot peel because there is nothing layered to peel, it fades evenly over decades instead of in patches, and a scratch shows colour instead of grey. It is the difference between tinted skin and a suntan.
Why do you insist on the sample panel?
Because wet stucco lies about its colour, and the wall it will live on is the only honest light. We trowel the candidate onto a board, bolt it beside your wall and leave it through weather — twenty-eight days is the honest match; anything faster is a guess with a trowel in its hand.
Where do expansion joints go, and why?
At structural breaks — openings, floor lines, and long unbroken runs — so the wall moves where it was designed to instead of cracking where it feels like. We re-strike existing bellows with backer rod and sealant rather than feathering over them, which is the failure we are most often called to fix.
Can you work in the Santa Vela heat?
Carefully. Coats are laid in the shade of the scaffold and fog-cured by hand so the water leaves the wall slowly — stucco that dries instead of cures is stucco that cracks by autumn. On the worst days the calendar wins, and the atelier says so up front.
The atelier reads walls Tuesdays and Fridays · six walls a season, drawings free · (555) 026-1279 · studio@muralisplaster.example
Book the wall reading
The age of the house, what the wall has been doing, and the light it faces. The reading is $210 with probes, strings and a written programme — and it comes off any work that follows. studio@muralisplaster.example