The five questions, answered first
How long does stucco actually last?
Fifty to eighty years when it is laid and cured properly — the oldest walls we maintain on the Plains were troweled before the studio existed. What cuts a wall short is almost never the plaster: it is rushed coats, leaking details above and joints somebody skipped. All three of those are ours to get right, and the warranty is twelve years in writing.
What does it cost?
New three-coat runs $15.50 the square foot, EIFS renewal $42, mineral re-colour $3.85, and the visit that decides which one you need is $290 — credited back against any work we then do. The rate sheet is further down this page, the quote after the visit is a ceiling, and no number on either moves mid-job.
Can you match my existing wall?
With a cured panel, every time. Candidates are troweled onto a board and bolted beside the old wall for twenty-eight days of Plains weather — wet stucco lies about its colour and morning light flatters it. The batch answers to the survivor, never to a fan deck.
Three-coat or EIFS — which do I have, and which do I want?
Tap it: three-coat is dense mineral all the way through, EIFS sounds hollow and gives slightly at the foam. Which you want depends on exposure, insulation and detail — EIFS is excellent when its envelope is sealed and doomed when a sill leaks into it. The visit reads what your house actually has and tells you honestly whether it should keep it.
How disruptive is the work?
Quieter than you fear and longer than paint: scaffold for the elevations, sheeting within fifteen feet, and a typical full lay running three weeks calendar of which perhaps five days are loud. Everything you need to move, the visit lists before we quote — no surprise on day one is a studio rule.
New three-coat lays
Scratch, brown and integral colour over two layers of paper and furred lath — the brown rodded plumb inside two millimetres, cured a full week, and the colour floated in one continuous wet edge per elevation. The system your grandfather would recognize, and your grandchildren repaint instead of replace.
EIFS by the moisture map
Scan first, probe second, open exactly what the readings condemn — usually a flat sill or a missing kick-out feeding water into otherwise sound foam. The insulation stays on the house, the opening disappears into the texture, and the cause is fixed in the same cut as the damage.
Re-colour & patch-match
Silicate mineral colour that bonds into the wall instead of filming on it, and patches matched to tone, sand grain and the hairline map of the field around them. A patch that announces itself is a re-do on a schedule; ours do not announce themselves.
How the studio runs
Visit to file, in five
The same five movements on every job, one crew the whole way — the calendar between them belongs to the coats, not to the booking sheet.
The visit
Moisture scan of every elevation, the joint survey drawn, and the five questions re-asked against your actual house. The panel is mixed before we leave the drive.
The panel
Twenty-eight days curing on your wall through Plains weather. The batch answers to the cured panel — wet stucco lies about its colour and we do not guess.
Water details first
Flashings, kick-outs and sill pans corrected before any plaster is mixed. Coating over a leaking detail is a scheduled disappointment, and the visit exists to find it.
The coats, on their clocks
Scratch rests two days, brown is rodded plumb and rests seven, colour floats in one wet edge per elevation. Every cure logged as it happens.
The wash-down & the file
The wall washed at day seven, photographed beside the day-one sheet, and the file bound with the moisture map, the panel card and the twelve-year warranty.
The same sheet every visit leaves behind
The rate sheet
Printed, dated and left on your table at the visit — the studio’s numbers and nobody else’s spin on them. The $290 visit comes off any work booked within a year, and the quote written after it is a ceiling.
New three-coat stucco$15.50 / sq ft
Scratch, brown and integral colour over lath
EIFS renewal, by the map$42 / sq ft
Foam, mesh and base coat where probed
Mineral re-colour, silicate$3.85 / sq ft
One wet edge per elevation, fog-cured
Expansion joint, cut & sealed$30 / lin ft
Placed at every structural break, weeped
Patch & match, per opening$470 each
Tone, sand grain and texture to the field
Visit, scan & panel$290 flat
Every elevation read; panel left curing — credited
Windrow & the Amber Plains
Plains walls, 2025 — 2026
Six elevations from last season, photographed the week the scaffold came down.
They answered every question on this page at the kitchen table before they quoted a dollar — and then the numbers they left matched the sheet to the cent, which after two contractors with sliding quotes was its own answer. The wall is one wet edge of Wheatbone and the neighbours keep slowing down at dusk to look at it.
The scan said our EIFS was dry and the sill above it was the whole problem — renewed in a day, matched so the painter the following spring could not find the opening. The visit cost $290 and saved us the fourteen-thousand-dollar re-skin another outfit had already drawn up.
The file is the part nobody else gives you: moisture map, panel card, cure log, photographs, warranty — bound, dated, and handed over at the wash-down. We refinanced in the spring and the surveyor kept asking who had done the walls, in the tone of someone taking notes.
The straight-answer clause
If any number the studio writes moves before the work ends, the difference is ours to carry — and if the visit says the wall wants nothing but a wash, the visit says so and nothing gets sold. Answers before contracts is not a slogan; it is the order of the page you are reading.
The studio, in figures
Visits within the week · answers before contracts, always · (555) 038-1275 · studio@halcyonwall.example
Ask the sixth question
Yours is the one not on the page — bring it. Tell us the age of the house, what the wall has been doing and what you would like it to stop doing. The $290 visit, scan and panel comes off any work that follows. studio@halcyonwall.example