Stucco Contractor & Stucco Remediation in Magalia, CA | Chico Elite Stucco

Chico Elite Stucco is a stucco contractor working on residential and commercial buildings in Magalia, California. We are licensed and insured. Most of what you are likely to need from us falls into a handful of jobs. You are most likely to call us for stucco repair, where a wall has cracked, chipped, or come away from what sits behind it. We also do stucco remediation, which means we follow the path water is taking behind a wall rather than treating the stain it has left on the face of it. Where a building has never carried stucco at all, we install it.

Walls that have gone dull, chalky, or patchy we resurface and recoat, in cement plaster, an acrylic finish, or an elastomeric coating, according to what the wall already carries and how much movement it has to take up. We paint and coat finished walls, and we remove and replace stucco that has gone past repairing. When you cannot tell which of those a wall needs, we inspect it first and tell you. We also handle new construction, decorative detail work, stone veneer, and interior plaster.

Magalia sits at 2,333 feet, on the ridge above the Feather River canyon.

A wall that has stood for decades often stands beside one that went up recently, so the first question on almost any job here is what the new work has to match. That question shapes the price, the materials, and the order the work is done in. We work throughout Chico and Butte County, including Oroville and the ridge communities, and we also serve parts of Glenn and Tehama counties. When you want a wall looked at, ask us for an estimate by phone on (530) 783-7384, or send us the details through our quote form.

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Why Choose Chico Elite Stucco for Magalia Stucco Work

A job in Magalia is part of our usual week, not a trip we make once and price as one. What you are quoted comes from looking at the wall in front of us, not from the house next door. Two houses on one street here can be decades apart in age, so what suits one of them can be wrong on the other, and that difference shows up in the finish long after a number has been agreed.

The rest of the reasons to hire us are ones you can check before you agree to anything.

  • We have more than 15 years of stucco experience and are licensed and insured.
  • We carry general liability and workers' compensation coverage for the people on your property.
  • Before anything is mixed, you get a written scope that names the wall system going on and the finish that will sit over it.
  • The visit costs you nothing and ends with a free estimate.
  • We work on houses and small commercial buildings alike.

Call us on (530) 783-7384 to arrange a visit, or use our quote form to tell us what the wall is doing. We also work along the ridge in Paradise.

Stucco Contractor Services for Magalia, California

Whatever your wall needs, the first thing we settle is which job it actually is. Magalia streets carry older and newer walls side by side, so the wall standing next to yours usually decides the answer. Everything below is work Chico Elite Stucco does in Magalia itself, and choosing between these jobs is where the work with a stucco contractor begins.

Stucco Painting & Coatings

Spraying a coating onto a prepared stucco wall

We renew the color on a wall that is sound underneath and tired only on the surface. We put on an acrylic coating for color, an elastomeric coating where a stretchier film is wanted, or a fog coat, which is a thin cement wash that recolors a finish without burying its texture. Under tree cover a wall gets dirty and stays damp, which spoils a finish faster here than sunlight does. The sides of a house are called its elevations, and on a wooded lot they rarely need the same work.

Stucco Installation

Plasterer in a sun hat troweling a large grey wall

Stucco installation puts a plaster wall on a house that has never carried one. Metal lath goes up first, a steel mesh that the wet plaster grips. Behind that lath we fix a weather-resistive barrier, a sheet that keeps water off the wood framing. On a Magalia street we agree the finish with you before the first coat goes on.

Residential Stucco

Pale yellow Spanish-style stucco home behind a lawn and front path

Residential work covers the whole house rather than the one wall you called about. Sides facing the canyon and sides under trees age at different rates, so they seldom want the same treatment at the same time. Where a house has been added to, we price the whole exterior in a single scope.

Stucco Inspection

Taking a moisture reading at the base of a stucco wall

An inspection is a visit that ends with a plain account of what your wall needs. We tap the wall for hollow areas where the plaster has let go behind an unbroken surface, and we look at where water leaves it, around windows, trim and the base. It is the cheapest way to find out which of those jobs you are actually buying.

Stucco Repair

Rebuilt stucco patch blended into the surrounding wall

Repair deals with failure in one area rather than across a wall. We cut back to material that is still sound, replace the lath where it has rusted away, and rebuild the patch in polymer-modified mortar, a cement mix that bonds to old work. Cracks that still move get an elastomeric sealant, which stays flexible, instead of a hard filler. The patch is matched back into the finish around it.

Stucco Removal & Replacement

Cutting failed stucco away to expose the lath behind it

Some walls are too far gone to patch, and the plaster comes off down to the framing. We take it off one side of the house at a time rather than opening the whole building at once. Pre-1980 construction gets tested for asbestos and lead before anything is disturbed. With the wall open we look at the sheathing, the boards under the plaster, and then a new barrier and new lath go back on.

Commercial Stucco

Orange stucco commercial building with a blue-trimmed arched window and balcony

Commercial stucco is the same trade on the shops, offices and community buildings along the ridge. We work in sections so the doors people use stay open, and we agree the dates with you before the crew arrives.

Stone Veneer & Stucco

Home combining stone veneer with a stucco exterior

Stone veneer is thin stone set over lath and a scratch coat, the rough first layer of plaster, so it is laid by the same trade as the wall around it. The joint where stone meets plaster is flashed with metal that sheds water rather than filled. It turns up most on a raised base, where the stone skirt of a newer house meets the slope it was built into.

Stucco Plastering

Troweling plaster onto a prepared wall

We also plaster the surfaces around a house rather than the house walls themselves. Soffits, porch and patio ceilings, garden and site walls, chimneys and parapets all carry the same material. They stand more exposed than a wall under a roof, and are often the first to want attention.

New Construction Stucco

Stucco going up on a new building under construction

On a house being built we come in as one of the trades. The lath and the barrier go up to the builder's schedule, and we sequence the flashing with the roofers and window installers so nothing is covered over out of order.

Decorative Stucco

Decorative stucco surround and quoins framing a window

Decorative work is the raised detail on a plaster wall. Foam trim, bands, sills, window surrounds and score lines are shaped and coated into the wall rather than stuck on afterward. Any detail sitting under tree drip has to drain as well as look right.

Interior Stucco

Troweling interior plaster onto a wall

Inside the house we lay plaster finishes by hand, from a troweled texture to a flat smooth one. A masonry or framed fireplace can be refinished without rebuilding the surround. Interior work carries on through the days when the outside is waiting on weather.

Stucco Resurfacing

Gloved hand drawing a float across a white stucco wall

Stucco resurfacing puts a new finish coat over a sound wall, without a tear-off. A redash, a fresh sprayed layer of plaster, gives the surface body again where a coating would only change its color.

What a Stucco Contractor Faces on Magalia Walls

On one Magalia street, walls finished decades apart stand side by side, and often on a single property, where an addition meets the original wall. That leaves a stucco contractor with a join to solve before a finish, because the new plaster has to meet a wall that has already weathered and is sound enough to hold it.

Matching a New Wall to the One It Meets

A texture match means reproducing the surface pattern of the existing wall in the new plaster. We work it up on a sample panel, a small trial area finished against your wall rather than picked from a chart, because the target is the weathered wall as it stands now. We record the iron-oxide pigment that gives the sample its color, so a later patch can be matched to the same finish coat. A match is close rather than identical, and we say so before we quote you. Where the join lands often does more than the last degree of closeness, so we end the new work at a corner, a band, or a change of plane.

What Has to Be True of the Older Wall First

New plaster is only as sound as the substrate it is tied to, the sheathing on the frame and the metal lath over it. We tap the older wall and listen for the hollow note that means the finish has let go, and where the history of the house is unclear we open a small area rather than price blind. What we find determines whether the new work can tie in, because a new wall joined to a failing one fails at the join. If water is already getting behind the old finish, that is a separate question. What we found goes into the written scope before a number is attached to it.

Crew applying a scratch coat over lath on a house under construction

About Magalia, California

Magalia is an unincorporated community in Butte County, spread along a wooded ridge at 2,333 feet, looking down into the Feather River Canyon, north along that ridge from Paradise. It was called Dogtown before it took the name Magalia, and the gold found here in 1859 is remembered at the Dogtown Nugget discovery site. The Magalia Community Church, in the older part of the community, is listed on the National Register.

That gold came out of the Willard Claim, a hydraulic mine in the Feather River Canyon northeast of town. Much of the newer building on the ridge followed the Camp Fire in 2018, which is why your street can carry houses only a few years old alongside houses that have stood for generations.

Where We Work In and Around Magalia

Magalia runs along a stretch of ridge, and the places we are called to are not all inside it. Paradise Pines and Old Skyway are inside the community itself. Stirling City and DeSabla are separate communities nearby, not districts of Magalia, and we work in both. Each one puts a different kind of property in front of us, and a different piece of work with it.

Paradise Pines: Recoating Walls That Sit Under Tree Cover

Paradise Pines is the largest subdivision inside Magalia, laid out in lots and governed in part by its own property owners association. Those lots are heavily wooded, so a wall there stands in shade for most of the day. Shade keeps a wall damp, and the shaded sides collect dirt, green growth and tree litter. We wash those walls and let them dry before any acrylic or elastomeric coating goes on, because a coating laid over a soiled surface lifts away from it.

Stirling City: New Stucco Further Up the Ridge

Stirling City stands about six miles up the ridge from Magalia, at roughly 3,570 feet. The Diamond Match Company founded it in 1903 as a lumber town, and the sawmill closed in the early 1970s, so much of the housing there was put up within one stretch of years and built much the same way. When we give a house up there its first stucco wall, we set that job its own dates rather than adding it to a week of Magalia work.

Old Skyway: Interior Plaster in the Older Part of Magalia

Old Skyway is the older routing through the community, the road that carried traffic before the newer route. We do interior plaster along it. That means wall and ceiling finishes troweled smooth by hand, and a fireplace surround refinished rather than torn out and rebuilt. This work goes ahead in a room you are still living in, so we close the room off and finish one area at a time.

DeSabla: Repairs Inside Magalia's Own Postal Area

DeSabla is a small unincorporated community about three miles along the ridge at 2,762 feet, which grew up around a power station built there in 1903. Its ZIP code is 95954, the same one Magalia uses. A cracked or broken wall at a DeSabla address is therefore quoted as Magalia work rather than as an out-of-area job. We seal the opened joints with elastomeric sealant and fill the broken face with polymer-modified mortar.

Scaffold set along an elevation for plaster work Plaster worked over metal lath, with the finish coat above it

Magalia Property, Access and Local Conditions

Exposure is the plain description of what a wall stands open to, and here it changes from one side of a house to the next. A parcel looking out over the canyon and a parcel with forest close behind it put different demands on the same plaster, so we read a Magalia property wall by wall.

Walls on the Canyon Side of the Ridge

The elevations facing the canyon are struck by rain carried on the wind and are exposed to open sun, while the sheltered faces of the same house sit out of both. Those canyon-facing walls dull, chalk and open up well before the others do. On them the metal that moves water off and out of the wall does more good than whichever finish is laid over it. Flashing sends water around a window or a roof join, and the weep screed is the strip along the bottom that lets trapped water drain away. We price the sides separately, because they rarely arrive at the same condition together.

Parcels That Back Onto Forest

A wall standing in tree shade dries slowly after rain, and limbs touching or overhanging it hold that damp against the finish. Leaves and needles build up along the ground at the base of the wall, which is the point where water that gets behind the plaster is meant to leave. Once that opening is buried, the bottom of the wall stays wet. We ask that growth be cut back and litter raked clear before work starts, so the base is visible and can be worked on, and the finish lasts longer on a wall where that strip is kept clear afterward.

To have your walls looked at one elevation at a time, call (530) 783-7384.

Floating plaster against a metal bead at a wall edge

Permits and Inspections on a Magalia Job

Two communities a few minutes apart on this ridge send the same stucco work to two different counters. Which one your job answers to is settled by a boundary you cannot see from the road rather than by how close you are to an office.

Why Magalia and Paradise Route the Same Job Differently

A building permit is the written approval a local authority gives before work starts, along with the visits it makes to check that work. Magalia has no town government of its own, so that authority here is Butte County, and its Department of Development Services handles the permits and the inspections.

Paradise, the next community along the ridge, is an incorporated town and runs its own building division. Your parcel sits on one side of that line or the other, and that decides which body reviews your job. We ask the authority what your job needs before the work is booked. One house on a street can follow a third path, because alterations to a manufactured home are reviewed and inspected by California's Department of Housing and Community Development rather than by a local building department. Tell us at the estimate if that is the house you own.

Rules That Come With the Subdivision Rather Than the County

A property owners association covers Paradise Pines, the large subdivision inside the community, and it keeps architectural rules of its own for exterior work. Those rules come with the parcel rather than with the county, so a job there can answer to two sets of rules at once, and satisfying one says nothing about the other. We cannot tell you what the association's rules cover, because we were not able to confirm them.

Asking the association what an exterior change needs is a short step, and the time to take it is before a scope is written. A requirement that surfaces afterward stops the work mid-wall and sends it back for a revised scope and a second start. The Contractors State License Board defines the C-35 Lathing and Plastering classification around lath, metal stud and channel work, and plaster coatings.

Stucco Remediation in Magalia

When water has gotten in behind a wall, we stop it and rebuild what it has damaged. That work is stucco remediation. It is a different scope from a repair, which restores a failed area of the finish, and from a replacement, which strips a wall and starts again. If your wall keeps staining after the surface has been patched, it usually belongs in the third group.

When the Problem Is Behind the Wall, Not On It

Water rarely enters where the mark appears; it runs down and sideways behind the finish first.

The signs that point behind the wall are staining that returns after a patch, a hollow area that keeps spreading, efflorescence, and damp at the base of a wall or under a window rather than at the crack. Efflorescence is the white powdery deposit left when water carries salts out of the wall and dries on the surface.

Before anything is closed up we find the path the water is taking, taking readings across the wall with a meter to see how far the wet area reaches. The correction is usually a piece of flashing, the overlap of the barrier behind the finish, or a detail above the stain. The junction where a newer addition meets an older wall is a common place to start.

What a Remediation Scope Covers, and Where It Stops

A remediation scope takes in the water path, the layers behind the finish that the water has reached, and the finish put back to match the wall around it. Where mold is visible, we do not test it and we do not remove it. A qualified independent specialist handles that assessment, because mold testing and removal are their own trade, and we carry on with the wall itself. What we found is written down before the work is priced.

Carrying a bag of plaster mix on site Working a fresh finish coat onto an existing wall

Stucco Questions From Magalia Property Owners

If only one elevation is being redone, will it match the rest of the house?

Closely, and we settle how closely before you commit. Your older finish coat has weathered, so the target is the wall as it stands today rather than the color it started as, which is why the sample panel is worked up outdoors against the wall itself.

Paradise has its own building department. Does our job in Magalia go through them?

No. Magalia is unincorporated, so the county is the building authority here. Paradise, being a town in its own right, has a department of its own. Which counter you deal with follows the jurisdiction your parcel sits in.

Our house looks out over the canyon. Does that side need anything different?

Usually yes, and the difference is in the water-shedding detail rather than a different material, so the flashing and the weep screed get more attention there. It also changes the order of work. If the whole house is not being done at once, the canyon side is worth doing first.

Our house was here before the newer ones on the street. Is what is behind our stucco likely to be different?

Often, yes, and that is why we look before we price. Older walls here frequently carry previous repairs, so what sits behind the finish is more often somebody's later work than the original build. Where no paperwork survives, opening a small area is the only way to find out what is behind the finish.

How close is a texture match, realistically?

Close enough that you stop seeing it, and we say so beforehand where it will not be. A hand-troweled finish varies across the original wall, so the honest target is the range of the existing texture rather than one spot of it.

Do you work in Magalia itself, or only down in Chico?

In Magalia itself, and on the ridge generally. Paradise Pines, Old Skyway and Stirling City sit inside the same coverage, so a property just off the edge of Magalia is almost certainly covered as well. A small job is still worth asking about.

Get a Free Stucco Estimate in Magalia

It starts with someone from Chico Elite Stucco standing in front of your wall in Magalia, reading what has happened to it. You then get the work we propose in writing, so you can read it over before you agree to anything. Call or use our online form now for a free estimate.