The wall most of these houses already have

Siding Fails at Openings First

Windows, corners, and the wall behind the cladding.

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Ocala Building Contractor is a Disabled Veteran Owned Business and a licensed contractor in the State of Florida (CBC1263067), with 17 years of construction experience. Call (352) 820-6068. For city versus county Ocala lots, use the Ocala service area page.

The usual exterior in Ocala and the rest of Marion County is stucco on concrete block. The block is the wall. The stucco is cement plaster bonded to that masonry. It is not a panel hung on nails, and it is not lap siding with a different name. Calling every outside finish siding is how the wrong assembly gets priced. A block wall, a wood-framed gable, and a framed addition can sit on the same house and still need three different skins. This page keeps those skins apart. Paint is none of them.

Cement plaster on block, said in order

Direct-applied stucco on block wants masonry that is straight, clean, and able to take a bond. The plaster goes on in coats, scratched so the next coat has something to grab, built out to a thickness that can survive weather, then finished. Control joints are planned so the coat can move a little without a random crack across a long wall. The bottom edge needs a stop that does not bury the plaster in soil or in a constant splash. A coat troweled on dirty block, feathered to nothing at the edges, will map every disappointment in the first hard rain.

Curing is part of the work in this heat. Stucco that dries in an afternoon because nobody kept it damp is weak, and it cracks for that reason alone. We do not treat a hairline crack as a structural confession, and we do not treat a wide crack with displacement as a paint item. The first is a stucco fact of life that may need a proper repair and a coating. The second is a reason to find out whether the block behind it moved. Stucco does not diagnose the footing.

A framed wall is a different assembly

Gables, porch infills, and some additions are wood frame, not block. Those walls do not get a trowel of plaster stuck to plywood and called the same thing as stucco on masonry. A framed wall needs a drainage plane: a water-resistive barrier behind the finish, lapped so water that gets past the siding or the stucco runs down and out. It needs flashing at every opening. It needs a weep at the bottom. Framing has to be sheathed and straight before any of that starts. Nailing lap siding to bare studs, or to block, skips the plane the water is supposed to use.

Stucco on a framed wall, when the plans actually call for it, is metal lath over that drainage plane, with a weep screed, casing beads at openings, and control joints. It is a system. It is still not lap siding. The lath, the fastener pattern, and the clearance at the bottom are the work. A thin coat meant for masonry, smeared over wood, cracks at the studs and holds water against the sheathing. We will not mix those specifications because both results are beige.

Lap siding, kept separate from the plaster

Fiber-cement and other lap siding shed water by the lap itself: each course covers the one below, joints land on solid backing, and the ends are treated the way the manufacturer requires so the edge does not drink. The courses sit over the drainage plane, not in place of it. Flashing at the head of a window has to come out over the siding or the trim, not hide behind it. Clearance at grade and at a roof keeps the bottoms out of standing water. Caulk is a joint material. It is not the weather barrier, and a bead smeared over a failed lap is not a re-side.

• Block walls: stucco bonded to masonry, with joints and a bottom edge that stays out of the dirt.
• Framed walls: a drainage plane first, then either lap siding or a lath-and-stucco system designed for frame.
• Every opening flashed, on either assembly, before the finish covers the flange.
• Paint and elastomeric coatings protect a sound coat. They do not replace missing lath or missing wrap.
• Stucco and lap siding are not interchangeable repairs for the same hole.
• New finish stops at grade, at roofs, and at decks instead of being buried.

Openings, coatings, and what paint cannot do

Windows and doors are holes in the finish. The flashing that keeps those holes honest is part of the exterior scope, not a favor the window crew might remember. Windows and doors covers the buck, the fin, and the product approval. The siding or stucco has to lap that flashing in the direction water runs. Reverse the lap and the new wall leaks into a house that looked finished. Where a deck or a roof kicks water at the wall, the finish and the flashing are detailed for that splash, not copied from the middle of a blank wall.

A coating is the last layer. Elastomeric paint can bridge hairline stucco cracks and shed rain if the coat under it is still stuck to the wall. It cannot tie a delaminated patch back to the block, and it cannot ventilate a framed wall that was built without a drainage plane. We will not sell a coating as a reconstruction. If the plaster sounds hollow, or the paper behind a framed wall is wet, the repair is removal back to something sound. Remodeling often exposes that condition when a window or a bath wall is opened. We would rather find it then than paint over it.

How the exterior sits in the contract

On a new house or a full residential construction addition, the exterior is sequenced after the walls are straight and the openings are set. As its own scope, a stucco repair or a re-side still needs an edge: which walls, which assembly, and whether the substrate is sound. We do not accept patch whatever is cracked as a quantity. Permits follow the parcel, including in Ocala, where a city lot and a county lot do not share a building department. The parent note on construction services is how this finish is either a chapter of a larger job or the whole job, and not a painting stop.