Bringing back History

Shanghai plaster is a kind of granolithic cement plaster that emerged in Hong Kong around the mid 1920s, and soon became one of the most popular material choices for modern buildings among oversees Chinese in the South China Sea in the 1930s.

Singapore is no exception and we can find hundreds of Shanghai plaster facades, from shophouses to Court houses.

Most Shanghai plaster façades have been covered by several layers of paint trough out the years and the trend pushed by NHB (National Heritage Board of Singapore) is now to uncover the original Shanghai plaster. RENUGLASS was appointed and worked closely with our client, the main contractor S-Team Services Pte Ltd, to do so on a typical Shophouse along south bridge road. We used Guard Industry bio degradable, slow action paint stripper: Guard Remover VG. This paint stripping technique is designed to prevent any damage to the original substrate. It feels great to turn back the wheels of time and strip the Shanghai plaster from the film forming paint that was suffocating it for so many decades.

A second step would be to repair the Shanghai plaster where needed, consolidate it if needed and protect it with ProtectGuard CE, our water and oil repellent Impregnation.

Metallic Spray Painting on Composite Panels

In June 2022 the team at Wearnes Automotive in Singapore reached out to RENUGLASS for the restoration of their Jaguar and Land Rover car showroom facade.

Wearnes is the number one luxury car retailer in Singapore with brands like Bentley, Aston Martin and Bugatti.

The facade was in PVDF aluminium (or polyvinyl fluoride). PVDF coating is a liquid-based coating applied on aluminium composite to enhance their ability to resist abrasion and corrosion.

We noticed strong degradation of the PVDF coating, with discolouration and scratch marks following what looked like a cleaning pattern.

It appeared that the previous contractor, failing to remove stains and bird drops to client satisfaction, used an abrasive cleaning method that damaged the PVDF coating beyond repair.

We were left with the only option of repainting the cladding. We proposed a metallic paint system that we applied on site after sanding and priming the existing composite panels.

Now, in order to avoid further degradation of the facade, the client engaged RENUGLASS for a quarterly cleaning of the showroom facade. This will guarantee a spotless showroom all year long and no need to budget for another facade restoration.

The lesson of this post to the building manager: call a restoration specialist when your cleaning contractor is failing to deliver the expected result. Don't let them run experimental cleaning techniques on your facade!

Dare or dare?

When client desire, architect vision and unique product meet, it can make sparkles!

Exposed concrete facades are making a comeback and the trend has also reached Singapore shores. When you decide to use exposed concrete you have a few choices: Off-form Precast, GRC, GFRC, UHPC mainly.

For 32F Nassim road the Architect, CSYA, and the client, decided to go for timber look off-form precast.

Once you have decided on the material, the next question is: how rough do you want it?

You can, leave it "as is", you can integrate color pigments in your concrete mix, you can stain it with a silicate stain, or even paint it with an emulsion paint (NOT RECOMMENDED THOUGH!).

I met CSYA in 2020 and introduced ProtectGuard Color, our staining product for concrete surfaces from Guard Industrie.

They had a crush on our iridescent range and chose Amethyst Mirage, a unique dichromatic effect stain that has no equivalent in the world.

Not only does it look the part, but it also does the job. ProtectGuard Color is a 2in1 impregnation that not only colors but also protects the concrete thanks to its water and oil repellent system.

Take a look at the project below and remember, don't get fooled by the colour difference between the pictures, it is not a mirage, it is Amethyst Mirage.