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painting stucco?

15 years ago

Hi. We have a 90-year-old house with stucco and want to get it painted this spring or summer. We're getting different bits of info from the people we've interviewed for the job (from Angie's List), and I have a couple of questions for the unbiased people here. I now know that you can't just slap any old paint on stucco. Is Dura Coat necessary? Regular paint mixed with concrete? And is it true that paint cures better when it's warm overnight? The guy I talked to yesterday said we should wait until June or July for that reason, but we were hoping to get it out of the way sooner. That's all I can think of now, and baby's screaming. TIA!

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Comments (5)

paintguy22
15 years ago
Well, you don't have to wait until June or July, but you certainly don't want temperatures dropping to near freezing at night even though it is warm during the day if you can avoid it. We also do not like to start the exterior painting season until we have had a few weeks of warm weather....gives the house a chance to really dry out. Sometimes this is mid April and sometimes this is early June.
sierraeast
15 years ago
Not being familiar with dura coat and maybe it's something similar to what I'm recommending is either an acrylic or elasomeric top coat specifically for stucco. The advantage is that it stays flexible expanding/contracting through temperature changes during the seasons as well as day/night. It basically remains crack free as long as the proper prep work on existing cracks and imperfections are addressed.
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here are two books that may be useful: 1) A Field Guide to American Houses, by Virginia and Lee McAlester. It is the standard, and it has pictures of houses similar to yours under 'Prairie'. It also shows porch posts that come from the period which you might enjoy. 2) House Styles in America, by James Massey and Shirley Maxwell. They write for The Old House Journal. This is in color and will give you ideas of how the houses in the first book might look with different colors. Your house is stucco which would have been earth-colored (red, brown, tan, even green - all muddy feeling, muted) or white, sometimes gray, with the window and porch trim and roof verge board and rafters as accent. You have white window sash. If you can't paint them, you should always add that color into your mix when you are trying swatches. Contrast is fine, but the colors are less sharp, not like a Colonial (which could be white with blue trim - what you have now). The windows would be all within one color so that they read as one thing, not each piece emphasized. Also see if you can pick a color from your roof. It isn't particularly visible, but you want everything you have to add to the image. The square lattice at your porch is a good choice - more Arts and Crafts, 4-square, Prairie, than diagonal lattice which tends to look more Victorian. Changing your porch posts and railing system to something less generic and more period inspired would really change the feel of the house. The colors you show in your swatches are going in the right direction. The question is where to put what! Look at Massey and Maxwell's book and see what makes your heart go pitter-pat! Then copy and adapt. And try out your colors on the back of the house!
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I've only done a couple stucco exteriors - and each was different. The last one was re-stucco'd in the 80's and required sealing. The other was a repaint - it was already "done" properly, but they hated the color. They called me just to pick out a new color and I didn't really hear about the prior prep. Stucco requires a painter that knows what he is doing, I do know that. I'm glad to hear that you don't want to go cheap. Here's a link to a pro-painter's forum. I trust these guys a lot and it might be a good place to ask about your exterior. Here is a link that might be useful: Painter Forum
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Thank you ranco22. I ended up going with a third coat. I was shocked, too, at the amount of paint it took. Soooo wished I'd used a primer first, as I did so on another area and the results were better. IMO, Benjamin Moore is totally misrepresenting their Aura Paint as being "self-priming," at least as far as painting on stucco goes. As a matter of fact, in all of the instances where I have used Aura, the results over a primer were superior to those without using a primer first. Two coats of Aura without a primer and I could still see the previous color through the paint, in addition to the little pin-holes in the finish. I don't have a spray gun, but I still have one large area of very rough stucco left to do and I will either have to get one, or get someone else to paint it who has one.
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Faron79
15 years ago
Above comments are pretty much right on...

I'd only add that the house will need a washing.
Pressure-washer is fastest...BUT...don't just blast away @ close range with high pressure!!
Back the pressure off, keep the tip a couple feet away, & keep it moving.
DAYS of drying are called for too!

Yes, "Elastomeric" paints for stucco/similiar sufaces have a more flexible binder-resin.

Faron
pitpat
Original Author
15 years ago
Thanks for the responses! And I made a mistake - it's Thorocoat, not Dura Coat (which is some other product). I am pretty sure it's elastomeric, but I'll double-check. Do we need to prime first? I don't know when it was last painted or treated (+10 years), but there are only some minor cracks in it, nothing too bad. We want it a medium gray, as opposed to the light gray it is now. So does that mean 1 coat of tinted primer and 1 coat of Thorocoat? It's supposed to be thick (and costly) and I don't *think* anyone has recommended 2 coats.

The cheapest quote we got was from a guy who said he *could* put an additive in the regular exterior paint if that's what we wanted, but this was in response to my question about it. Had I not asked, I guess he would just have used an exterior paint. I suppose it wouldn't be a good idea to go with someone who's not so familiar with stucco, huh? But we don't want to pay $11,000!!!
sierraeast
15 years ago
11k sounds pricy but it depends on the complexity of your home. You need to get more than one estimate from those that are experienced with elastomeric top coats over stucco. If they are required to be licensed in your area, get their #'s and check them out with your states licensing board for any negatives against them. Ask to see current and past projects concerning elastomeric over stucco and ask those customers how it went overall. You can also do your own research on elastomeric top coats by googling it and find out what the manufacturers recommend concerning priming/prep.

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