The dry window runs October to April — colour laid into rising gulf humidity blisters as it cures. Walk-overs inside 72 hours, coast-wide: (555) 036-9041.
The coast, in figures
Mineral, never film
A film sits on the wall like tape and traps a household’s own vapor behind it — on the gulf, that is a blister with a schedule. Integral colour is pigment through the finish coat; silicate bonds chemically into it. Both breathe, both age by matting down, and neither ever needs stripping.
EIFS that breathes on the gulf
Foam, mesh and coatings over a weather barrier — insulation a gulf summer pays back fast, when the envelope is sealed, drained and weeped for vapor drive in BOTH directions. We scan before we quote, open what the moisture map condemns, and fix the feeding detail in the same cut.
Storm stitching & patch-match
What driving rain cracks, the dry window mends: V-cut, grouted, meshed and feathered until it disappears, matched to the tone, the sand grain and the texture of the field. One batch per elevation on the patch jobs — especially on the patch jobs.
The dry-window sequence
A wall, walk-over to wash-down
Five stations on every elevation, worked inside the window the humidity leaves us — the same on a boardwalk arcade as on a beach cottage.
The walk-over
Probes at the trim, corners and grade; the vapor drive read on both faces; a joint survey drawn. The panel is mixed at the truck and bolted to the wall before we leave the drive.
The panel, 28 days
Candidates cure on your wall through real gulf weather — humid mornings, salt evenings, one squall at minimum. Wet stucco lies about its colour; the survivor tells the truth.
Water details & lath
Kick-outs, flashings and sill pans corrected first, then paper, furred lath and the weep screed. Coating over a leaking detail is a scheduled disappointment.
The coats, on their clocks
Scratch rests two days, brown is rodded true and rests seven, colour floats in one continuous wet edge per elevation — fog-cured against the drying breeze.
The year-after wash
Twelve months on, the wall is washed, photographed beside the day-one sheet, and the vapor clause closes with two words: still breathing.
Gannet Point & the Lagoon Coast
Lagoon walls, 2025 — 2026
Six elevations from last dry window, photographed the week the scaffold came down.
The vapor clause
If a mineral finish we laid blisters from vapor trapped behind our own work, the re-lay is ours — materials, scaffold and all — inside twelve years. Blistering from somebody else’s film underneath is diagnosed at the walk-over and priced before we coat, never after. In writing, with the moisture map attached.
Services & rates
The rate card
From last season’s closed jobs around the Point and up the Lagoon. The $270 walk-over comes off any work booked within a year, every line includes scaffold to three storeys and the wash-down, and the quote is a ceiling the humidity cannot lift.
New three-coat stucco$15.30 / sq ft
Scratch, brown and integral colour over lath
EIFS renewal, by the map$42 / sq ft
Envelope sealed, drained and weeped for the gulf
Silicate re-colour, mineral$3.95 / sq ft
Bonds into the wall — one wet edge per elevation
Expansion joint, cut & sealed$31 / lin ft
At every structural break, weeped at the grade
Crack stitching, V-cut$19 / lin ft
Grouted, meshed and feathered to nothing
Walk-over & moisture map$270 flat
Probes, vapor read, joint survey — credited
Every painter on the Point had a five-year plan for our walls and a three-year record of missing it. Palmetto & Reed pressure-washed twenty years of failing film off the house, let the walls dry for a month, and re-coloured in silicate mineral — matched from a panel that cured on our own porch through a September squall. Four humid summers later the finish has matted down like good leather and blistered exactly nowhere. The vapor clause has never once been needed, and knowing it exists is half the reason we sleep through storm season.
Before the walk-over
Straight answers
The five the shop phone hears most between storms. The sixth is usually about hurricanes — ask it anyway, the answer involves a calendar and a straight face. walls@palmettoreed.example
Why does paint blister so badly here?
Vapor and salt. A film blocks the moisture a breathing wall and a humid climate trade every day; pressure builds behind the coating until it lifts. Eighty-two percent of the blistering we read is exactly that — a film on a wall that needed to breathe, blamed on the weather. Mineral finishes bond into the substrate and leave the exchange working, which is why the coast stopped eating them somewhere around year fifteen.
What is vapor drive, in plain words?
Moisture moving through the wall toward the drier side — inland in summer, seaward in winter, always. A wall system that ignores it traps the moisture mid-wall; one built for it lets the finish itself pass vapor while shedding liquid. Every EIFS envelope we close is detailed for both directions, because the gulf runs them both every year.
Can anything be laid in the wet season?
Repairs, stitching and interior work, yes; colour, no. A finish laid into rising humidity cures with the moisture already in it, and the blisters arrive on schedule about eighteen months later. We close the colour calendar when the dew point closes it — October, usually — and the walk-overs run all year so the window opens with your file already written.
Is EIFS a bad idea in hurricane country?
Badly detailed EIFS is a bad idea anywhere; well-detailed EIFS handles wind-driven rain better than most systems, because the envelope is sealed, drained and weeped on purpose. The map tells us what your elevation actually has behind it today — and if the honest answer is a different system, that is the answer you get at the walk-over.
How far out is the dry window?
Walk-overs inside 72 hours; the work itself books into the October-to-April window, full elevations first and repairs filling the margins. The $270 walk-over comes off whatever follows — and the panel starts curing the day of it, because the panel is the long pole on every job anyway.
Walk-overs inside 72 hours · the colour calendar runs October to April · (555) 036-9041 · walls@palmettoreed.example
Get the walk-over booked
Tell us the age of the house, which face the weather comes from and what the humidity has done to both. The $270 walk-over — probes, vapor read and a panel left curing — comes off any work that follows. walls@palmettoreed.example