Stucco, render & exterior coating · Grange Corners & Harlow County · Est. 1993
Three coats. Posted rates. No paint promises.
The menu below is the whole business: walls by the square foot, details by the foot, and a reading that comes off the job. The brown coat cures a week because the brown coat IS the wall; the colour is batched integral instead of filmed over; and the joints go where the structure steps, not where the trowel ran out.
Rate menu posted since 1998 · $260 wall reading credited to any job · (555) 028-6617 · shop@milsteadcoating.example
How Milstead prices
The menu, read straight down
Two sheets, one for walls and one for details, printed off last quarter’s closed jobs across Harlow County. No tiers, no packages, no site-visit surcharge — the reading is $260, it comes off whatever the verdict names, and the quote is a ceiling.
Walls — by the square foot
New three-coat stucco$14.80 / sq ft
Scratch, brown and integral colour over paper-backed lath
EIFS repair, moisture-mapped$42 / sq ft
Foam, mesh and base coat renewed where the probes say
Mineral re-colour, silicate$3.75 / sq ft
Bonds into the wall — one wet edge per elevation
Lime consolidation, pre-1940$12.90 / sq ft
Old render re-bonded in kind, left breathable
Details — by the foot & the piece
Expansion joint, cut & sealed$31 / lin ft
At every structural break and floor line
Foam bands & quoins$23 / lin ft
Coated EPS struck level, meshed into the field
Crack stitching, V-cut$18 / lin ft
Grouted, meshed and feathered to nothing
Patch & match, per opening$460 each
Tone, sand grain and texture matched to the field
Probe & moisture survey$260 flat
Readings at trim, corners and grade — credited
Services
The three coats, numbered
01
The scratch coat — grip
Mixed stiff, thrown on, scratched horizontal so the next coat has something to hold. It is the thinnest of the three and the one nobody ever sees — and nothing above it stays up without it. Two days of rest, whatever the schedule wants.
02
The brown coat — the wall itself
Rodded plumb to a string line, floated to tooth, corners struck straight. Every defect under the colour coat is a shadow at five in the afternoon forever, so the brown is where the craft spends its week — literally: seven days of cure before colour earns the surface.
03
The colour coat — integral, never filmed
Pigment batched into the finish at the mixer, one continuous wet edge per elevation so no stop-line ever shows, fog-cured against county wind. Through-coloured and vapour-open: it ages like the render it is instead of peeling like the paint it refuses to be.
04
The joints & the paper behind
Two layers of building paper, wire lath furred off it, a weep screed at the grade, and sealant joints at every structural break — the parts nobody photographs deciding whether anybody ever photographs the wall.
How it goes
From reading to wash-down
The same sequence on every job — the only variable is your project.
Day 0
The reading
Moisture probes at the trim, corners and grade line; a sample panel mixed from pigment and left curing on your wall. The quote is written against what the wall says, not what the brochure shows.
Days 1–2
Water details & lath
Flashings, kick-outs and sill pans checked and corrected before any plaster is mixed — then paper, weep screed and furred lath, lapped the way the old spec still asks.
Day 3
Scratch
Thrown stiff, scored horizontal, left strictly alone for forty-eight hours while it does the quiet chemical work of becoming part of the wall.
Days 5–9
Brown
Rodded to the string until the wall is true, floated to tooth, corners struck. Seven days minimum — the calendar belongs to the coat, not to the booking sheet.
Day 10+
Colour, cure & wash-down
One wet edge per elevation, fog-cured, then the wash-down a week later and the ten-year warranty in your name.
Harlow County, 2025 — 2026
Recent walls
Six from last season’s book, photographed the week the scaffold came down.
Three painters quoted us three shades of beige and a five-year cycle. Milstead batched the colour into the finish coat, cut the joints the 1921 builder never bothered with, and matched the schoolhouse wall so well the county heritage officer asked which section was new. Twelve years in, it has needed exactly one wash.
The menu is the menu. Our job came in two hundred dollars UNDER the sheet because the patch count came in smaller than the reading allowed for — and they told us before we saw the invoice, not after.
They left the sample panel bolted to the porch for a month and never once hurried us. The batch they finally mixed reads the same at eight in the morning and at dusk in November — which no painter ever managed on this street.
Our 1938 render was chalky, cracked and patched by three decades of previous owners. They consolidated it in kind, stitched what needed stitching, and the wall breathes the way old render is supposed to. The reading document alone was worth the call.
Paint or integral colour — what actually lasts?
Integral, and it is not close. Paint is a film: it peels at the exposures it cannot survive and takes the whole strip-and-recoat cycle with it. An integral colour is pigment through the finish coat — through-coloured, vapour-open, touched up without a border. Film costs less the day it goes on and more every cycle after.
What are the expansion joints on my wall for?
Stucco is rigid and the structure under it is not — joints give the inevitable movement somewhere designed to go instead of a crack somewhere random. We place them at floor lines, structural breaks and major openings, sealant-filled, never cement-filled, and weeped at the base so the wall drains what it takes on.
Can you match a century-old finish?
With a cured panel, exactly — tone matched dry, troweled onto a board, and left on your wall through weeks of county weather. Wet render lies about its colour and sunlight flatters it; the panel does neither, and the batch is matched to the panel alone.
How long should a re-colour hold?
A silicate mineral colour bonds chemically into the render and matte-downs with age instead of delaminating — fifteen to twenty years to the next coat, which is a wash and a roll rather than a strip and a scaffold. The filmed alternative is a countdown you can read in year six.
Do you lay through the winter?
Down to four degrees, tented and heated when the night threatens. Below that the calendar wins and we say so on the first call — a colour coat laid cold is the crack you ring us about in three years, and refusing that job is the cheapest warranty we sell.
The shop line
Readings within the week, the menu mailed on request, and the same crew that reads your wall lays it. The $260 reading comes off any job booked within a year — including the one where the verdict is: do nothing yet. shop@milsteadcoating.example
The laying calendar runs April to October · readings within the week · (555) 028-6617 · shop@milsteadcoating.example
Start with the reading
Tell us the age of the house, what the wall has been doing and how long it has been doing it. The $260 reading — probes, panel and a written verdict — comes off any job that follows it. shop@milsteadcoating.example