Project: Stucco Repair After Window Replacement
New windows are a good investment. What nobody warns you about is the wall around them.
Call (407) 456-2006 or (863) 398-3871, or get a free estimate.
The job nobody quotes for
When windows are replaced on a stucco home, the old units come out and the stucco around each opening comes out with them. What the window company hands back is a house with excellent new windows and a ragged, unfinished band of damaged stucco around every one of them.
That is the position this home was in. The photographs show the new units in place, still carrying their manufacturer stickers, with the wall around them opened up and waiting.
Two things now have to happen, and only one of them is obvious.
Closing the wall properly
The obvious part is filling the gap. The part that matters is how it is filled, because the perimeter of a window is the single most common place for water to get into a stucco wall. It is a joint between two materials that move differently, sitting in a spot where rain is driven horizontally at it for half the year.
A window opening that is packed out carelessly is a leak with a nice view. So the openings were closed and built back in proper coats, and the detail around each unit was made to shed water rather than collect it.
Matching the texture back into the wall
The second part is the one you can see in the photographs: the fresh stucco around the openings has to be worked back into the texture of the existing wall.
This is harder than it sounds on a home like this one, because the surrounding stucco is not new. It has weathered. Its texture has softened in places and its color is nothing like fresh material. A patch that is perfectly flat and perfectly smooth is more obviously wrong, not less. The finish has to be floated to match what is actually on the wall, so that when the light rakes across the elevation in the afternoon it breaks the same way over the new work as the old.
Done properly, you stop being able to find the boundary. That is the whole test, and it is what the finish coat is working toward in these photographs.
What this job should tell you
If you are planning to replace windows on a stucco home, budget for the stucco. Ask who is closing the openings and who is matching the texture, and get that answered before the first window comes out, not after. A beautiful new window in a badly finished opening is a water problem waiting to start, and it is far cheaper to have the wall closed correctly the first time than to repair the consequences later.
This is standard stucco repair work for us, and the same texture-matching discipline we bring to stucco crack repair on an ordinary wall.
Get a free estimate
Having windows done, or living with a wall that was never finished after they were? Call (407) 456-2006 or (863) 398-3871, or get a free estimate. Insured, more than 15 years in Central Florida, and rated 4.8 stars across 48 Google reviews. Our on-site estimate is free. (A formal stucco inspection with moisture probes and a written report is a different, specialist service, averaging around $850.)