Marlowe & Tull, Plasterers · Stucco & exterior finishes · Peche Harbor & the Ness · Third generation
The tide takes paint in five years. Plaster shrugs.
Two generations of Marlowes and one of Tull have plastered the Harbor’s salt-facing walls: three coats over paper-backed lath, mineral colour that bonds into the wall instead of filming on it, and moisture probes before any trowel is mixed — because the sea is patient, and a film is not. The rate card reads like a menu and the almanac below is how we actually run a wall.
The almanac has been printed every spring since 1968 · $300 reading credited to any job · (555) 034-2210
The five movements
How a Marlowe wall runs
The same five movements on every elevation from the Customs House to the last cottage on the Ness — the only variable the sea allows us is your wall.
The reading
Probes at the trim, corners and grade line; salt tide lines photographed and dated; the joint survey drawn. The panel is mixed before we leave the quay.
Water details first
Flashings, kick-outs and sill pans corrected before any plaster is mixed — most coastal failure is water from above, and coating over a leak is a scheduled disappointment.
Scratch, scored and rested
Paper-backed lath furred and lapped, the scratch coat thrown stiff and scored horizontal. Then nobody touches it for two days, whatever the tide clock says.
Brown, rodded to the string
The coat that IS the wall — rodded plumb, floated to tooth, corners struck straight, cured a week against the salt wind before colour earns the surface.
Colour in one wet edge
Mineral silicate batched to the cured panel, one continuous wet edge per elevation, fog-cured through the sea fret. Wash-down at day seven, warranty in your name.
Services & rates
The rate card
From last season’s walls around the Harbor and out the Ness. The $300 reading comes off the job when we do the work, and every line includes scaffold to three storeys, the sample panel and the final wash-down in sea-safe mineral.
New three-coat stucco$15.10 / sq ft
Scratch, brown and integral colour over paper-backed lath
EIFS repair, moisture-mapped$43 / sq ft
Foam, mesh and base coat renewed where the probes say
Mineral re-colour, silicate$3.90 / sq ft
Bonds into the wall — one wet edge per elevation
Lime consolidation, pre-1940$12.60 / sq ft
Old harbor render re-bonded in kind, left breathable
Expansion joint, cut & sealed$31 / lin ft
At every structural break, weeped at the grade
Reading, probes & panel$300 flat
Tide-line map, joint survey, panel left curing
Every painter the harbor ever hired repainted the sea wall on a five-year cycle and called it maintenance. Marlowe & Tull probed it, consolidated the old render in lime, and re-coloured in mineral — the wall now shrugs off weather that took the house next door back to bare block. Nine years and it has needed one wash.
The panel sat on our porch through a month of fret and gale and they never once hurried it. The batch it earned reads the same at eight in the morning, at noon glare and under the harbor lamp at dusk — which three painters in twenty years never managed on this street.
Their scan found the EIFS damage on our gable was a missing kick-out feeding six feet of foam — not the re-skin the first bid priced. They renewed exactly what the map condemned and fixed the kick-out in the same cut. Two winters of driving salt later, the patch is still invisible from the quay.
From the almanac
Harbor walls, 2025 — 2026
Printed each spring since 1968
The almanac year
The harbor sets the calendar and the almanac writes it down — four seasons, the same every year, which is precisely why the walls last.
Spring
The reading season
Fret lifts, walls dry out, and the probes come out with it. Readings, panels and joint surveys — the whole year’s book is made in April and May.
Early summer
The lays
Scratch and brown go on in the long, mild days — the coats that want steady temperature and no drama. Scaffold up the quay, plastic run home every night.
High summer
The colour window
The settled weeks the mineral colour waits for: one wet edge per elevation, fog-cured through the fret, washed down at day seven while the light still holds.
Autumn
Stitching & repairs
What winter cracked, autumn mends — V-cut, grouted, meshed and matched before the first gale. Small work, booked tight, finished tighter.
Winter
Tented work only
Heated enclosures for what cannot wait, and honest dates for everything else. A colour coat laid into cold salt air is a warranty claim with a calendar on it.
The harbor trust put all four of its terraces out to bid. One firm wanted to render over the 1911 faces, one wanted to paint them, and Marlowe & Tull wanted to read them — which took two afternoons and cost the reading fee. The verdict: sound walls, tired joints, three centuries of somebody else’s shortcuts. They consolidated in lime, stitched what needed stitching, and re-coloured in the original bone tone. The trust now sends every owner to the almanac first.
The shop, in figures
Before the quay call
Fair questions
The five the shop phone hears most, seven to five, harbor-wide. The sixth is usually about seagulls — ask it anyway. almanac@marlowetull.example
Why does paint fail so fast in salt air?
Salt, ultraviolet and a film that traps vapor. A painted coastal wall takes wind-driven moisture through every micro-crack, holds it against the render, and blisters from within — five years is the honest average on the Ness. A mineral silicate bonds into the wall and lets moisture leave through the finish itself, which is why the almanac stopped selling films in 1989.
Can you match a color from 1911?
With a cured panel, exactly. Tone matched dry, candidates troweled onto a board, and the board bolted beside the old wall through weeks of harbor weather — wet render lies, morning light flatters, and only a panel that has lived through both gets to decide a batch. Twenty-eight days is the honest match.
What is lime consolidation, and why pre-1940?
Old render was laid in lime, and lime wants lime: it breathes, it flexes with a building’s seasons, and it self-heals hairline movement. Cement over lime traps moisture and spalls the very face you were protecting. We re-bond lifted render with compatible lime grouts and finish in kind — on a pre-war harbor wall there is no other honest answer.
Is EIFS a mistake on the coast?
Not when it is detailed for the coast — the mistake is the details. Vapor drive pushes inland-facing walls one way and sea-facing the other; the envelope has to be sealed, drained and weeped to suit, and every sill, joint and kick-out has to assume driving rain. We scan before we quote, and the map decides the openings.
How long is the wait for a lay?
The reading happens the week you call; lays book six to eight weeks out in the season, and the colour window belongs to the settled weeks of high summer. Repair and stitching run all autumn. The almanac prints the calendar each spring, and the shop keeps to it the way the tide keeps to theirs.
The almanac prints each spring · readings within the week, harbor-wide · (555) 034-2210 · almanac@marlowetull.example
Bring the wall to the yard
Tell us the age of the house, what the sea has done to the wall and what previous owners did about it. The $300 reading — probes, tide-line map and a panel left curing — comes off any work that follows. almanac@marlowetull.example