Repair · Viera, FL
Bulging stucco repair in Viera
The stucco up at the chimney was weathered and starting to fail, and a long horizontal band on the wall was bulging away from the substrate. We pulled the bad sections, re-attached fresh stucco, and matched the lace texture so the repair blends into the rest of the house.
Service performed: Stucco Repair
Where we work: Stucco repair in Viera
A chimney chase takes weather from every side
The first photograph is the chase, up on the shingles, and it has had a hard time of it — the finish worn back to a mottled grey and green across both faces, the edges gone soft, metal flashing round the base and a flue cap on top.
Nothing shades a box that sits above the roof line. It gets sun on every face across the day, the full push of a storm, and everything that runs off the cap. It soaks and dries on a far faster cycle than the walls below it ever do.
Stucco that comes away in a line, not a hole
The other before photograph is the gable end. High on the wall the finish has broken away in a ragged band several feet long, there is a smaller piece gone beside the downspout, and a straight horizontal line runs right across the elevation at about the height of the window head.
A break shaped like that says the material parted from its backing over a run rather than at one point, which means the ragged edge you can see is not the edge. The wall gets tapped outward from the damage until it stops answering empty, and that is what sets the true size of the work — usually larger than the photograph makes it look.
What the metal at the bottom of the chase is for
Round the base of the chase there is flashing where it meets the shingles. The standard stucco is applied to is blunt that plaster is not a waterproof material, and at a roof intersection it is the metal doing the water management, not the finish.
So a coat stops above it. Running new material over that flange to tidy the line would bury the one part of the assembly keeping the roof dry. Working up there also means keeping shingles clean as you go, because dropped material sets fast on a hot roof.
Matching a texture nobody will ever stand next to
The finished chase carries a lace with the same skip and the same depth of shadow as the house underneath it. Up there that matters more than the exact shade of the mix does.
A chase is seen against open sky from the street, so what registers is the pattern of light and dark the trowel left, not the pigment. Put the wrong sand and the wrong stroke on it and you get a box that reads as something bolted onto the roof, even when the colour is close enough to argue about.
Cracked, bulging, or just looks tired?
Send a photo or have Tony come take a look. The estimate is free.