Stucco Repair and Recoating in Sebastian, FL

What Salt Does to Stucco in Sebastian

Sebastian sits on the Indian River Lagoon, and salt travels a long way inland on the wind. You do not need a water view to carry a salt load. Homes several streets back from the river still pick up enough chloride over the years to cause trouble.

Salt does not eat the stucco itself. It attacks the metal in and behind it. Corner bead rusts and swells until it splits the finish from the inside. Lath corrodes on frame walls. Old fasteners bleed orange through the paint. Sealant at windows and doors dries out faster under salt and sun, so water gets behind the wall and pushes the stucco off from the back.

• Rust stains bleeding down from outside corners
• Hollow or drummy stucco below window openings
• Failed caulk joints at window and door frames
• Blistering paint on the windward and sunniest elevations
• Cracks that reopen a season after being patched

Older Block Homes and Original Sand Finishes

A lot of Sebastian housing stock is modest single story block, built decades ago with a sand or knockdown finish that has been painted many times since. Those walls are usually sound. The trouble sits at the edges: sills, corners, hose bibs, meter boxes, and anywhere a fixture was added later and never sealed properly.

Repair on these homes is mostly a matching problem. Older sand finishes were floated with coarser aggregate than most crews use today. Match the sand size and the float pressure and the patch disappears under paint. Miss it and you see the repair from the street for as long as you own the house.

• Sand and knockdown texture matching on original walls
• Patching at hose bibs, meter boxes and abandoned fixture holes
• Rebuilding damaged sills and decorative bands
• Cutting out and replacing rusted corner bead rather than skimming over it

Newer Homes on the West Side of Sebastian

Newer Sebastian construction is generally block with a thinner one coat or two coat stucco system over it. These walls crack differently than the older ones. You get fine diagonal cracks running off window and door corners in the first few years while the building settles and the stucco finishes curing.

Those cracks start out cosmetic. They stop being cosmetic when they open far enough to hold water. On a salt exposed wall that timeline is shorter, because damp stucco and salt go to work on the metal behind the finish. We would rather deal with them before the first repaint than after.

Elastomeric Coating and Sealant Renewal

On coastal walls the coating matters more than it does inland. A standard flat paint bridges nothing and will telegraph every hairline back within a year or two. A properly applied elastomeric or high build system carries enough film thickness to bridge fine cracking and hold out wind driven rain coming off the lagoon.

Coating is not a substitute for repair. We open and fill the real cracks first, patch anything that sounds hollow, and replace failed sealant at every penetration. Then the coating goes on. In that order it lasts. In the wrong order you have painted over a leak.

• Crack routing and filling before any coating
• Full sealant replacement at windows, doors and wall penetrations
• Elastomeric and high build acrylic systems
• Primer selection for chalky, previously painted walls

Working in Indian River County

Sebastian is in Indian River County, not St. Lucie County, so permitting and inspection run through a different office than our Port St. Lucie work. We handle that end of it. If the job needs a permit we pull it, and we schedule the work around the inspection instead of leaving a wall open waiting.

We run Sebastian as scheduled trips up US 1 and group jobs where we can, which means you get a firm start date rather than a vague window. Tell us what the wall is doing and we will give you a straight answer about whether it is a patch, a section or a full elevation.