Stucco & exterior finishes · Verano & the Solera Valley · Third generation
Three coats, troweled true, and fifty quiet years.
Almendra lays new three-coat stucco — scratch, brown, color — over paper-backed lath, repairs EIFS from the foam out, and re-colors walls that are sound but tired. Cures we do not rush, corners we do not cheat, and a rate card that reads like a menu.
Sample boards cured on your wall before we mix the batch · a ten-year warranty on every new lay · Est. 1994
The Almendra yard
One trade, three coats, no shortcuts
Grandfather Almendra plastered the Solera mission, and the yard still mixes its own color from pigment and white cement. We take one elevation at a time with a crew of five, the scaffold stays until the brown coat reads plumb to the string, and the color goes on in one continuous wet edge — because a stop in the middle of a wall shows for thirty years.
Cure is not a suggestion
The scratch coat cures two days minimum before the brown touches it, and the brown cures a week before color. We will not finish a wall the calendar says is dry when the wall says otherwise — a cracked color coat is a schedule sin, not a materials one.
Services & rates
The rate card
From last season's walls in Verano, Solera and on the mesa. The $240 survey comes off the job when we do the work, and every line already includes scaffold to two storeys, the sample board and the final wash-down.
New three-coat stucco$14.50 / sq ft
Scratch, brown and color over paper-backed lath
EIFS repair$38 / sq ft
Moisture-mapped; foam, mesh and base coat replaced from the damage out
Re-color coat$3.20 / sq ft
Elastomeric tinted to sample, rolled and brushed in one wet edge
Foam trim & bands$21 / lin ft
Coated EPS profiles struck level and meshed into the field
Crack stitching$18 / lin ft
V-cut, grouted, meshed and feathered until it disappears
Moisture probe & survey$240 flat
Invasive readings at the trim, the corners and the grade line
The valley, 2025 — 2026
Recent walls
Six walls from the last year, photographed the morning the scaffold came down. Nothing styled, nothing filtered — a troweled wall does not need either.
How it goes
A wall, in order
The same sequence on every job — the only variable is your project.
Day 0
Visit & probe
Readings at the trim, the corners and the grade line; a sample board mixed and left with you. The quote is written before we leave, priced against real colors in your own light.
Days 1–2
Prep & lath
Sheeting, kick-outs and flashings checked first — most stucco failure is water from above, not through. Then building paper and wire lath, furred and lapped the way the 1962 spec still asks.
Day 3
Scratch coat
Mixed stiff, thrown on, scratched horizontal so the brown has something to hold. Then nobody touches it for two days, whatever the schedule wants.
Days 5–8
Brown coat
Rodded plumb to a string line, floated to tooth, corners struck straight. This coat is the wall; the color is only its face.
Day 9+
Color coat & cure
One continuous wet edge per elevation, fog-cured by hand in Solera heat. The wall gets its wash-down a week later, and the ten-year clock starts.
The valley says
Kept quiet, lived against
The sample board sat on our patio for three weeks before we chose, and they never once hurried us. The color they matched reads the same at nine in the morning and at dusk — which the previous painter never managed in twenty years of trying.
Two outfits told us the whole south elevation of EIFS had to come off. Almendra probed it, found the damage stopped at the parapet, cut out sixty square feet and matched the texture so well the inspector asked which section was new.
They stitched 240 feet of cracks on the schoolhouse and re-colored the lot over one summer, term-time around. The scaffold went up and came down on the days the letter said it would — the headmistress framed the schedule.
Before you call
Fair questions
The five the first visit usually raises. If yours is not here, the studio line at the bottom of the page runs eight to six, valley-wide.
How long does stucco actually last?
Laid and cured properly, longer than anything else on the outside of a house — fifty to eighty years is normal in this valley, and the Solera mission still carries field coats from the fifties. It fails early when coats are rushed or flashings leak; both of those are on us, in writing.
Can you match my existing color?
With a cured sample, every time. We mix from pigment and white cement at the yard, trowel the candidate onto a board and leave it on your wall through a few days of weather — wet stucco lies about its color, and we do not guess from a fan deck.
What is EIFS, and why does it fail?
Exterior insulation and finish system — foam, mesh and coatings over a weather barrier. It fails where water gets behind it: unsealed trim, flat sills, a kick-out somebody omitted. We probe before we quote, because the damage you can see is rarely the damage there is.
How messy is a re-color?
Less than paint — there is no sanding. Everything within fifteen feet gets sheeted, the elastomeric goes on rolled and brushed in one wet edge, and the wash-down happens the same week. Most re-colors run four to six working days an elevation.
Do you lay stucco in winter?
Down to four degrees, tented and heated if the night threatens. Below that the calendar wins and we say so plainly — a color coat laid cold is the crack you call us about in three years.
The laying season books out by May · (555) 016-3829 · studio@almendrastucco.example
Bring us the wall
Tell us the age of the house, the color you are after and what the wall has been doing. The $240 survey with readings and a sample board is the first step, and it comes off the job when we do the work. studio@almendrastucco.example