Siding gets judged on how it looks and fails on how it handles water. That gap is why so much exterior money gets spent on the wrong thing: a wall gets re-clad or a crack gets patched while the flashing detail that let water in stays exactly as it was, and the same problem comes back a few seasons later one layer deeper.
These guides are about where the failures actually happen. The seams, penetrations and transitions that account for most of them. What different kinds of stucco cracking are telling you, and which ones justify opening a wall. And the honest comparison between repairing a section and doing a whole elevation, including what makes a patch a reasonable answer rather than a delay.
Anyone who has stripped cladding off a house knows the pattern before they start. The wide open field of a wall, where there is nothing but panel over barrier over sheathing, is almost…
Read it →Stucco is a cement-based cladding applied in coats over lath, and it is heavy, hard, and durable. It is also not waterproof, and it was never meant to be. It absorbs some water when it…
Read it →Homeowners tend to frame this decision around how bad the damage looks. That is the wrong axis. A large area of impact damage on a sound, dry wall is a straightforward repair. A small soft…
Read it →A minute of detail now saves an hour of guessing later, on both ends.
