Stucco
Stucco is an excellent choice for your home exterior. Made of Portland cement, lime, sand and water, stucco provides a hard, durable, weather-resistant outer surface to protect your home from the elements. However, over time, stucco exteriors can suffer small chips, fractures, stains and fading and may need repair.
Choose your paint
You may already know what color of paint you want, but the type of paint you use can prove just as important. When painting stucco, you do not want to use a high-gloss paint. Stucco looks best with a flat or low-sheen paint. Kelly-Moore offers a full line of exterior acrylic masonry paints, including flat and low-sheen paints to breathe new life into your stucco home.
Prepare the surface
First, remove all dirt, mildew and loose coating. A good pressure wash with a concentrated cleaner designed for exterior use should do the trick. Seal any cracks with an Elastomeric caulk. Textured caulk works great for stucco walls. For best results, you may want to coat the walls with primer before painting. Adding an acrylic primer for exterior masonry often improves overall results. Make sure to let the primer dry completely before applying paint to the surfaces.
Time to paint
First of all, check the weather. If at all possible, choose a day with moderate humidity and a daytime temperature between 50 and 90 degrees Fahrenheit (10-32 degrees Celsius) to complete your painting job. Start by “cutting in,” or painting the perimeter of the wall and around any trim, windows and doors with a brush. Work the brush into the texture of the stucco to ensure a uniform finish. Finish off the wall with a roller, working in sections. Make sure to blend the sections together by overlaying the paint a bit when you move to the next section.
For optimum results, let the paint dry overnight, then apply a second coat. You can use the roller again, or if you have one available and know how to use it, you can use a paint sprayer for the second coat.
It may seem like a lot of work, but a fresh coat of paint or two can really spruce up a stucco exterior, revitalizing the color of the walls and reinforcing the structure and texture of the stucco itself.
