Stucco Repairs (Holiday: house, transfer, buy)

[LoriColchester]

Hi,
My mother lives in Indian River County in a home in need of stucco repair. It's a fairly extensive area (the entire front of the home) with large bulges and indentations. I have no idea what the problem is, but I assume once the stucco is chipped off there might be an answer behind the wall.

Can anyone recommend a contractor who does repairs of this nature?

Thanks,
Lori

[Synergy1]

I do not know of anyone in the area you live. I can add that when stucco is origianally applied to be flexible the lifetime seems to lenghten when the area can remain away from consistant leakage or penetration of water.

It is not uncommon to see homes last over a hundred years with stucco while the owners must use a slurry of whitewash mixed with lime as predominate painting. So without seeing the area of yours I would say you have water seeping to the inside of the stucco. Most stucco deterioration is the result of water infiltration into the building structure, either through the roof, around chimneys, window and door openings, or excessive ground water or moisture penetrating through, or splashing up from the foundation.

Potential deterioration include ground settlement lintel and door frame settlement, inadequate or leaking gutters and downspouts, intrusive vegetation, moisture migration within walls due to interior condensation and humidity, etc etc etc. Water infiltration will cause wood lath to rot, and metal lath and nails to rust, which eventually will cause stucco to lose its bond and pull away from its original foundation. That is where the bulging is seen....

Good luck and please post how it worked out for you. Experienced brick or stone masons know this type of work along with very good painting contractors. In view of theier experienc needed to do a competent job you may pay a lot of money for the tear down, discovery of original problem then their repairs..... I think you need to do this work ASAP before more of the wall moves away from the home framing..

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[dbay]

Yes, good info..and you can't patch it..it just shows through...

[LoriColchester]

Originally Posted by Synergy1

Good luck and please post how it worked out for you. Experienced brick or stone masons know this type of work along with very good painting contractors. In view of theier experienc needed to do a competent job you may pay a lot of money for the tear down, discovery of original problem then their repairs..... I think you need to do this work ASAP before more of the wall moves away from the home framing..

....

Thanks Synergy. You are absolutely right that this repair shouldn't be delayed. I've spent the last five years trying to convince my mother that there is indeed a problem. Now that it's gotten so big, she admits she can see it. Still, she's not happy to have to deal with it!

Since I live in NC, I'm trying to get some names before I go down there and actually meet with contractors. I think I might start with calling the builder (Holiday Homes built the house twenty years ago) to see if they have names to recommend.

Yes, I'll let you know how this progresses.

Lori

[Synergy1]

Holiday Homes builds a good home and a home of just 20 years old makes me wonder what went wrong....Contacting the original builder is a good idea and maybe he /she can give you some information on who can do the repairs correctly or it may be possible Holiday Homes wll do the repairs.



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[stevep111]

Just use google there are plenty of companies that do the repair. You can even go through one of the places like Homecheapo or Lowedowns. They have competative contractors that will go out and give an esitmate. You can pretty much do that from where you live if you do it like that.

They can email you an estimate and you can compair it with others. The good thing is that no one has to be home when the repairs are done but I would have them take pictures and email them to you both before and after the repairs are done. The patterns are kind of hard to match so don't expect perfection.

My house is now 3/12 years old and I have been making monthly rounds of the walls looking for cracks. You will definately see them and they are very easy to fix. They have a simple caulk that you can buy to fill the holes. If you have matching paint for the wall you can just go behind after you calk and paint over it. The key is to make sure you do this at least two to three times a year because it is better to catch it early. One tip, and I know this does not help you but is if you see a large crack going down a wall and you want to stop it, take a drill and at the bottom of the crack, drill a small hole just into the stucco. This will stop the crack in it's place. Most of the cracks you will see though follow along the block lines where the mortar was. I don't know why this is because they are supposed to put up a screen over the blocks to get the stucco to adhere.

Other places that I have found are chip marks on corners where the weed whacker takes out a chunk. Those are also easy to fix either with the calk or with some cement you can get at the store. If you can repair drywall you should be able to fix those no problem.

In fact I put up a white board in my Garage and listed all of the monthly chores I have to do to the house as a reminder. I am transfering them to a Calendar so I can plan ahead but I will still leave the list up. You can do this for your mother and call her to make sure things are followed up on.

Also there are plenty of local and national handiman services in the area but you need to be very careful about them. A lot of them will make up work so they can collect money. Again if they see something that needs to be repaired they can take a picture and email you the description and what it takes to fix it.