Stucco Contractor & Stucco Painting in Hamilton City, CA | Chico Elite Stucco

We recolor a wall whose plaster is still sound with stucco painting and coatings. Out here the color goes flat well before the wall behind it does, because the film that carries the color holds the fine dust the air keeps putting on it. A coating is a paint film that goes over the existing finish rather than a new layer of plaster, so it hides the dulling without changing the texture underneath.

Both of the coatings we use flex with a wall that moves in the heat: acrylic coating gives a tough colored film, and elastomeric coating stretches over hairline cracking that keeps opening and closing. We wash the wall down and let it dry first, since a film laid over settled grit lifts early.

With stucco installation we put a full plaster system on a wall that has never carried one, whether that is a new house in town or a shop building out on the farm ground. The wall is built up in order: lath, the metal mesh the plaster grips, goes on over a weather-resistive barrier, which is the layered water-shedding paper between the plaster and the wood behind it. That barrier is not one sheet. Over wood sheathing it is two independent layers, so water getting past the first still has a second to run down.

Three coats of portland cement plaster follow, which is the material the word stucco names. Each of the first two coats is kept damp for its required curing time before the next goes on.

Residential stucco is our work on single-family houses, on the town grid and on parcels out past it. The street face and the back wall of the same house rarely soil at the same rate, since one stands open to the road and the other sits behind a fence or a row of trees. We quote repairs, recoating and full walls, and we walk every side of the house before we price any of it rather than pricing the elevation you can see from the curb.

A stucco inspection is a written look at a wall before you commit to a scope or a budget, and its first job is telling a dirty finish apart from one that has broken down. We tap across the wall by hand and listen for the dull, hollow sound that means the plaster has let go of what is behind it, then work along the base, the windows and doors, and the joints where the wall meets another material. You get the findings in writing.

We use stucco repair on isolated damage where the wall around it is otherwise sound, which is most of the damage we are called out to. A patch is visible for two reasons at once: the new texture rarely matches the old, and new material starts clean beside a wall that has years of settled grit on it. We take the damaged material back until we reach plaster and lath that are still holding, then rebuild with polymer-modified mortar, a repair mortar mixed with a bonding additive so it grips the old edge. Where a crack is still opening and closing with the seasons, we fill it with elastomeric sealant, which stays flexible instead of cracking again.

With stucco removal and replacement we take a failed wall off and rebuild the whole system behind it. It is for walls that have stopped doing their job, not for walls that look tired. We take the stucco off one side of the building at a time, so the structure is never open all the way round, and once a side is bare we look at the sheathing and framing before anything new goes back over them.

We use stucco remediation where water has reached the back of the plaster. Grit sits on the face of a wall and washes off; water comes from the other direction and does its damage out of sight, usually through a window head, a roof junction or a flashing that was lapped the wrong way. We map where the wall is holding moisture, rebuild the flashing at those junctions, and correct the lap direction so water runs down and out. Where mold is visible, a qualified independent specialist handles that assessment, since testing and removal are their own trade.

Commercial stucco is our work on the buildings around town: shopfronts on the main road, agricultural buildings, and structures standing beside a yard that vehicles use all day. A wall in that position collects far more off the air than a house wall does, because every pass across a dry yard puts more of it up. We phase the work elevation by elevation so the building keeps operating while we are on it.

Stone veneer and stucco often appear on the same house, with stone on a base course or a column and plaster across everything above. The two go on the same way, over lath and a scratch coat, which is the first rough layer of plaster. The difference shows later: a flat stucco wall lets grit blow off it, while the recessed mortar joints between stones hold it. We point those joints and clean them as part of the work.

Stucco plastering is the same trade applied to everything around the house that is not a main wall. Soffits and porch ceilings, the horizontal surfaces tucked under the edge of a roof, catch what blows up under there and never get rained on, so they need attention the open walls do not. We also work on garden and site walls, chimneys and parapets, which are the low walls that carry on above a roofline, using cement and lime plaster.

New construction stucco is plaster on buildings going up now, and we work to the builder's schedule. The finish has to be chosen from a sample before the wall exists, and out here a new wall begins gathering grit within its first weeks, so we talk that through rather than matching a swatch. We coordinate the lath inspection, a hold point where the lath has to be looked at before any plaster covers it, with the general contractor.

Decorative stucco is the raised and cut detail on a wall: bands, sills, window surrounds, reveals, score lines and architectural foam trim shaped and then plastered over. Every one of those projects from the wall face or cuts into it, which gives settled grit a ledge to sit on where a flat wall would shed it. That shows sooner on detail than on plain wall, and it is worth knowing before you add it.

Interior stucco is plaster used as a finished surface inside rooms, for owners who want a hand-worked wall rather than painted drywall. We apply smooth, mineral and hand-troweled plaster, each a different amount of texture left by the trowel. A fireplace surround takes the same finishes, and a masonry or framed one can be refinished in place without the surround being rebuilt.

We resurface a wall at the point where the finish has to be replaced rather than cleaned, on a wall that is tired rather than failed. What goes on is a redash, a fresh finish coat with real body to it that is troweled on and given its own texture, whether that is a heavy lace, where the trowel leaves raised swirls over a rougher ground, or a coarse dash, where the material is thrown on so it dries as an even field of small lumps. That thickness is the difference from a coating, which is only a film of paint over whatever texture is already there.