New Construction Stucco in Chico, California: New Homes, Additions and Multifamily Builds from Chico Elite Stucco
Chico Elite Stucco applies new construction stucco for people building a house in Chico, California, and for the general contractors who run those jobs. We have more than 15 years of stucco experience and are licensed and insured. We plaster new houses from the slab up, additions and second-story work on an existing house, and tract and multifamily builds.
Our part of a build starts at dry-in, the point when the shell keeps weather out, and runs through the lath inspection. Lath is the metal mesh that goes over the wall to give the plaster something to grip, and the lath inspection is the building department's look at that mesh and everything sitting behind it before plaster covers it. Behind the plaster go the water-resistive barrier, the wrap that keeps water off the wall, and the flashing at the openings.
We work to ASTM C926 and ASTM C1063, the published specifications for applying plaster and for the lath under it, and to the minimum waits California's plaster code sets between coats. Portland cement plaster is noncombustible, which is why builders reach for it in the wildland-urban interface.
We build in Paradise, Magalia and Durham and across Butte, Glenn and Tehama counties, and as your stucco contractor we plan our dates with your builder instead of assuming them. Call (530) 783-7384 or use the quote form for a free estimate.
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New Construction Stucco for Homes, Additions and Multifamily Builds in Chico
New construction stucco is portland cement plaster put on a building that has never carried a finish, whether that is a house on a bare lot, an addition onto a house you live in, or a multifamily building. All three hand us a wall built new to carry plaster, so what goes on it is chosen on the drawings before anyone mixes anything, and the day we start is set by how far the building has got.
Plaster goes on after the framer, the roofer and the window installer have finished, which leaves the general contractor's calendar to decide when a crew arrives. The plaster barely changes between the three, and the calendar changes a great deal. A single house gives us one shell to wait on, an addition puts our crew alongside people who are living there, and a tract or multifamily site is a run of buildings we take in sequence.
A Stucco House Built From the Slab Up
A house built from the slab up reaches us late. The framer stands the walls, sheathing goes on over the framing, the roof and windows follow, and plaster starts only once the building is dried in. That puts us among the last exterior trades on the job, working over the water-resistive barrier and the metal lath that go on the walls ahead of us.
The decisions that are yours get made long before that. You choose the finish texture, the color and the system while the job is on paper, and changing one once a crew is booked costs days. A whole elevation, meaning one face of the building, goes on in a single run, so rain or a face the crew cannot reach moves the day.
Additions and Second-Story Work on an Existing House
An addition or a second story is a new build joined to a house somebody is living in. Your household stays put while the job runs, so we plan access around you and keep dust out of the rooms you are using. On a building put up before 1980, material is tested for asbestos and lead before anything is disturbed. Where opening that wall exposes visible mold, a qualified independent specialist handles that assessment, since testing and removal are their own trade.
The new wall also has to meet an old one. Where the new plaster ties into the existing finish is a plastering detail, and how closely an older finish can be matched is worth asking about early.
Tract Homes and Multifamily Buildings
On tract homes and multifamily work we take the building faces in sequence instead of opening the whole site at once. One elevation is lathed and ready for an inspector while another is still being framed, so no part of the site waits on a single check. Where the same elevation repeats down a street, one crew carries one finish across all of them.
What that buys a builder is predictable dates rather than speed. You get dates you can hand to the trades working behind us, instead of one long closure of the exterior. Occupied commercial buildings, retail and mixed-use work run on different rules, because trading hours, public access and the tenants already inside set when a crew can stand at the wall.
New Construction Stucco in the Build Sequence: From Dry-In to Finish Coat
Three handovers in the build sequence set your new construction stucco dates. The shell has to be closed to weather, the lath has to be signed off by an inspector, and the trades ahead of us have to be finished at the wall. Each has a different person on the other side, which is why a stucco date agreed with us alone is not yet a date.
Plaster then goes on in three coats, each doing a different job. The scratch coat is the one that keys into the lath and holds everything above it on the wall. The brown coat brings the surface flat and true. The finish coat carries the color and the texture you will be looking at.
Missing a handover costs more than a morning; a crew that arrives at a wall it cannot start goes to another job, and the next opening can be weeks out.
Dry-In, and Why It Is the Milestone That Matters
Dry-in is the point where the roof is on and the windows and doors are set and flashed, so weather no longer reaches the framing. Plaster waits for it because wet cement plaster goes onto a wall that is already protected; it is a wall covering, not what keeps rain off the lumber during the build.
So a slipped roof or a late window delivery moves every stucco date behind it. Window flashing goes on with the openings, while the barrier and the lath both come later, and both are ours. On an addition, only the new shell has to reach dry-in. Ask a builder for the dry-in date rather than the stucco date.
The Lath Inspection Hold Point
A hold point is a stage a build may not pass until an inspector has seen it. Lath gets one because everything behind the plaster disappears the moment the scratch coat goes on. At the lath inspection the inspector sees the metal lath, how it is fastened, the water-resistive barrier behind it and the accessories. The lath is installed to ASTM C1063, the specification that governs how metal lath is fixed to a wall.
We arrange the inspection with your general contractor rather than assuming a date, and no plaster goes on until it is signed off. A missed or failed call costs a full re-inspection cycle and a crew scheduled back. What it settles is the lath layer and everything under it, not whether the building as a whole meets code.
Flashing and Windows: Sequencing With the Framer
A wall sheds water by overlap, each layer lapping over the one below it, so water running down the face is carried back out rather than behind. If the window installer, the framer and we lay our materials in the wrong order, water gets in behind the wall at the openings, and careful plastering does not correct a lap built the wrong way round.
We agree the flashing sequence at window heads, at sills and where the roof meets a wall with the framer and the window installer before the wall is wrapped, and we ask for the window schedule then rather than at lath stage. A reversed lap cannot be seen on a finished elevation and stays hidden until the first wet winter.
Working to a General Contractor's Calendar
On a managed build our stucco package is one line on a program, with trades either side of it. What a general contractor buys from us is durations they can plan against. We quote the real ones, not the optimistic ones. We flag a slipped predecessor the day we see it, not at the door on the morning. And where a wall cannot be closed, we hold the crew.
Painters and landscapers work after the plaster, so their dates move with ours. If you are building your own house without a general contractor, you get the same conversation about what we need from the trades ahead of us, how long our part runs, and when the trades behind us can have the wall.
Noncombustible Exterior Walls and Ridge Rebuilds in the Wildland-Urban Interface
What a building's exterior walls are made of is settled at permit and at the point the assemblies are chosen, which is a decision only a new build gets to make. In California's wildland-urban interface, the areas where houses sit among wildland vegetation, an exterior wall covering has to be noncombustible or ignition-resistant, and portland cement plaster qualifies. A ridge rebuild is new construction, so this is a live decision for anyone building back up there.
No product makes a house meet those standards, and nobody selling you one can tell you whether your lot is covered. The building department holding the permit for that lot is the one that says whether the interface requirements reach it and whether the finished building satisfies them, and that answer is worth having before the drawings are fixed.
What Noncombustible Means for a Wall Covering
Noncombustible describes the material itself. Portland cement plaster is mineral, mixed from cement, sand and water, so it does not burn and it adds no fuel of its own to a fire outside the wall. That is a statement about what the plaster is rather than a fire-resistance rating, which is earned by a whole tested wall assembly and belongs to commercial work.
Embers carried ahead of a fire land on and around a building far more often than flame stands against the cladding. A wall covering that will not catch is one of several things keeping an ember from finding something that will.
The Assembly Decides, Not the Finish
A house in the interface is judged whole rather than product by product, and the wall covering is one part of it. Eaves and soffits, attic vents, decks, windows and the ground immediately around the building each carry requirements of their own. Plaster on the walls does nothing about a vent that lets embers into an attic.
So we work the wall covering out with your builder and your designer alongside those other details instead of treating the walls on their own. When you sit down with your designer, ask which details your lot's requirements reach, not only what the walls will be made of.
Where Foam Trim and EIFS Change the Answer
Some things sold as stucco are built on expanded polystyrene, a foam plastic. That covers EIFS, short for exterior insulation and finish system, and the architectural foam trim used for bands, window surrounds and corbels, all of which put a thin plaster finish over foam. Foam is not noncombustible, so on a wall carrying it the statement that stucco adds no fuel stops being true.
On an interface lot we raise this at specification stage, while the design can still absorb a change and before the trim is ordered. The workable course is to keep foam off the exterior of an interface house. Ask your designer to draw the bands, surrounds and corbels in a mineral finish over lath, or to leave them off the elevation, and put the question of whether foam is permitted on your lot to the building department that will review the drawings.
Why Choose Chico Elite Stucco for New Construction Stucco
What separates one stucco contractor from another on a new build is rarely the plaster. It is how the work is sequenced against the inspections the job already has, what specification it is built to, what coverage stands behind the crew, and how the price is arrived at.
- We settle the order of work with your general contractor, your framer and your window installer while the openings are still going in, and the dates we give the trades behind us already contain the curing time.
- We build to ASTM C926 for the plaster and ASTM C1063 for the lath beneath it.
- We carry general liability and workers' compensation coverage.
- We estimate residential and commercial new builds at the site itself, and that estimate is free.
The Contractors State License Board defines the C-35 Lathing and Plastering classification around lath, metal stud channel work and plaster coatings, which is the work described on this page.
How We Fit a Stucco Package Into Your Build
A new construction stucco package with Chico Elite Stucco runs to five steps, and you or your builder take part in each one.
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1
Send Us the Drawings
Send us the elevations and the specification.
Send the elevation drawings and the specification, whether they come from you or from your builder. What comes back is a takeoff, meaning the wall areas measured off those drawings. If your lot carries wildland-urban interface requirements, send those as well, because they can change what goes on the wall.
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2
Site Visit at Framing or Dry-In
Meet us at the building, at framing or once it is dried in.
Once there is something to look at, we walk the building. We can come at framing, but dry-in is better, because by then the openings are set and we can see what we will be working over. We look at access, at the sheathing, at the openings and at how far the site has reached. That visit is on site, and so is the free estimate that follows it. On an addition we note the join to the existing wall and the age of the house at the same visit.
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3
Written Scope and a Slot on the Calendar
Approve a written scope and a date.
You then get a written scope naming the system, the finish and what is included, together with a date that contains the waiting periods between coats. What you approve is a specification rather than a bare price, and a specification is something you can hold another bidder's line against.
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4
Lath, Then the Inspection Call
Walk the lath before the inspection is called.
The barrier and the lath go up, and the lath inspection is called with your general contractor. The build pauses here by design rather than by accident. Before the call, you or your builder can walk the lath with us, and that walk is the last chance anyone has to see what sits behind the plaster.
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5
Coats, Cure and the Walkthrough
Walk the finished walls before the scaffold comes down.
The coats go on with their waiting periods between them. Once the finish is on, we walk the building with you or your builder before the scaffold comes down, looking at whether the finish looks consistent across each elevation, at how the edges and corners are closed off, and at the clean-up. Anything raised while the scaffold is still standing is far easier to put right than anything found after it has gone.
To start at step one, send your elevations through the quote form or reach us on (530) 783-7384.
Stucco Decisions the Plans Have to Settle Before Framing
Three decisions about new construction stucco are cheap while the job is still on paper and expensive once the building exists. They are the system, what the plaster will sit on, and everything that has to pass through the wall or meet it, which takes in the penetrations, the trim and the joints. Each belongs to the design stage, and each is settled by your designer, your framer or you. Raise them with those people before framing and they cost nothing. Raise them after the lath is up and they cost weeks.
The System, Chosen at Design Stage
Which system goes on the building belongs in the specification rather than in the bidding, because the system changes the backing, the trim details, the schedule and the price together. Changing it after framing therefore changes more than the plaster.
Three routes are in ordinary use. Traditional three-coat work builds the base up in more than one pass over metal lath. An engineered one-coat system puts that base on in a single pass. EIFS is built over foam rather than over lath. What separates them at this level is how many passes the base takes and what it goes over. Ask for the system to be named on the drawings instead of left for bidders to assume.
What the Plaster Will Sit On
The framer's sheathing is up before we arrive and it sets what is possible. Wood-based sheathing and foam sheathing are different surfaces to fasten lath to, and different surfaces for water to drain across, so that choice belongs in one conversation with the framer and with us.
Plaster is a cladding. What your walls are braced against wind and shaking with is the wood structural panel shear wall the framer builds behind it, and that bracing is designed and inspected as part of the frame. Bracing is not the plaster's job. The bottom of the wall gets settled on paper for a similar reason. The weep screed, the metal edge that lets water out at the base of a plastered wall, has to clear the finished grade, and on a new build the landscaper sets final grade after the plaster is on. Its height therefore comes off the site plan rather than off the dirt lying there that day.
Penetrations, Vents and Trim the Plaster Has to Meet
Everything that passes through an exterior wall belongs to another trade, and all of it has to be resolved against the plaster. Hose bibs, dryer and range vents, electrical boxes, light blocks and the gas and meter runs each break the wall surface, and each is located on the drawings rather than found once the lath is up. A penetration cut afterward is a patch in a wall nobody has lived behind yet.
The trim and the control-joint layout are drawn at the same time. Control joints are the metal lines that divide a large plastered surface into panels, and their layout follows ASTM C1063, the same specification that governs the lath. Where they land stays visible for the life of the building, so look at the elevation drawings and see where they fall before you approve them.
Building in Butte, Glenn and Tehama Counties
Two very different kinds of build go on across these counties. Subdivisions on the floor of the Sacramento Valley get about 27 inches of rain a year, and it arrives concentrated from late autumn through spring rather than spread across the year. Ridge lots east of Chico sit in the wildland-urban interface, so if you are building up there, what goes on your walls is settled differently.
Chico Elite Stucco builds in sixteen communities across Butte, Glenn and Tehama counties. From Chico, our service area extends east into Paradise, Magalia and Forest Ranch, south through Durham toward Oroville, Biggs and Gridley, west through Hamilton City and Orland toward Willows, and north toward Corning and Los Molinos.
The Communities Chico Elite Stucco Builds In
- Paradise, CA
- Oroville, CA
- Durham, CA
- Magalia, CA
- Orland, CA
- Gridley, CA
- Corning, CA
- Forest Ranch, CA
- Biggs, CA
- Cohasset, CA
- Hamilton City, CA
- Los Molinos, CA
- Willows, CA
- Vina, CA
- Richvale, CA
- Butte City, CA
New Construction Stucco Questions From Builders and Homeowners
When in a build does the stucco go on?
The stucco starts once the shell is dried in and the lath inspection has been signed off, and it comes before the painters and the landscapers. That puts it near the end of the exterior sequence, so anything still to be done at the openings has to be finished first. On a building with several elevations, one face can start while the framers are still on the next. Anything that has to be fixed to a finished wall later, a light fitting or a hose bib that was missed, means cutting into new plaster, so it is worth walking the elevations for those before we begin.
How long does the stucco stage last on a new house?
The answer has two halves: the working days our crew spends on the wall, and the waits the code requires between coats. The longest single wait runs a minimum of seven days ahead of the finish coat, which is what pushes a three-coat schedule beyond a single week. A one-coat system shortens the application side without removing that wait. The waiting is the same on a small addition as on a whole house, so a short run of wall does not buy you a short schedule.
Who books the lath inspection?
The permit holder calls it, which is your general contractor on a managed build and you on an owner-build. We tell them the day the lath is ready. Called too early, the visit is wasted and the site waits for a second one. A call that does not pass is not a rebuild either; the lath is corrected where the inspector marks it and the visit is booked again, so what it costs you is days rather than material.
Can new stucco be matched to an existing house on an addition?
Closely. Texture is reproduced from a sample panel, and color is matched against a piece of your own wall, never off a chart. An aged wall and a new one weather differently, so expect a close match that evens out rather than an invisible one, and a whole elevation matches more easily than a patch in the middle of one.
Is stucco a good exterior wall covering for a house in the wildland-urban interface?
For the wall covering itself, yes. Portland cement plaster is noncombustible, and interface requirements call for a noncombustible or ignition-resistant covering. The walls alone do not settle it, though. Eaves, vents, decks and windows are looked at as well, and only your permitting building department can confirm what applies to your address and whether the finished house clears it. Put the question to them yourself instead of relying on how a product describes itself, and put it at design stage, not at the point you are choosing a finish.
Does the builder or the homeowner hire the stucco contractor?
Both happen. Usually the builder does, and our price then sits inside your build budget. If you are running the build yourself, you hire us directly. What changes is who chooses the finish and who schedules the other trades around us. On a managed build you can still ask your builder to show you the stucco scope.
Talk to Chico Elite Stucco About Your Build
Chico Elite Stucco quotes new construction stucco across Butte, Glenn and Tehama counties. We come out to the building, and you get back a specification you can hold a rival bid against, with a date on it. Call (530) 783-7384 or use the quote form, and we will price the walls on your drawings.