STUCCO NEWS.NET

I found your email online, and I was hoping you could answer a couple of quick stucco questions for me to help ease my mind.

1. We put on our finish/texture coat of stucco yesterday around 4-5pm. The day was overcast. Around 11pm-12midnight that same day it began to rain fairly hard for about 30minutes. The stucco was on the side of the house covered by roofing eaves/fascia boards, but I'm sure some water hit the stucco. Do you think this will damage the stucco at all? The texture looks fine for now, but I'm worried that this will hurt the work somewhere down the road.

Don't worry. After mortar has set up for 7 hours rain should not cause any damage, EXCEPT in cold weather. In cold weather the finish takes maybe 3 days or so to set up all the way. If it rains in the meantime, the color can get messed up, but usually not the texture. It this case, it doesn't matter, because the wall gets painted anyway.

We do have a magic solution for fixing the color, check out the next question.

The stucco should set up 30 days before painting, unless you are in a real pinch. By painting the stucco you are sealing the pores, and interfering with the curing process. Painting the stucco before 30 days, the mortar would never reach maximum strength. Sure, it only has to be so strong, but by painting the stucco very prematurely, say in less than 2 weeks, you risk having paint peeling in the future because the stucco has too much of a water content.

The best paint to use on new stucco is masonry paint and masonry primer.

I wrote that elastomeric paint was the best back in 1999 when I started my FAQ page. I changed my mind and opinion since then all the information is pretty much obsolete. I don't plan to edit the page because it is still way up there in the search engines and directs people here.