Older stucco wants the repair done first.

An older housing stock, and what that means

Brandon was built out well before the towns south of it. Much of the housing dates from the seventies through the nineties, which makes it block ranch homes with stucco, some frame houses with siding, and mature oaks over nearly all of it. The bones are usually good and the finishes have had thirty or forty years of Florida weather on them.

That age shows up as layers of paint. Some of these walls have been coated four or five times, and somewhere in the stack there is often a layer that has given up. If the top coat is peeling off in a sheet rather than chalking evenly, the problem is underneath it, and putting more paint on top achieves nothing at all.

So a Brandon estimate involves more looking than a newer house does. We check for chalk, find where paint is lifting, test the caulk at every opening, and look hard at the soffit and fascia, because those are what fail first on a house of this age.

• Failing layers found before anything is quoted
• Low pressure wash that kills mildew rather than blasting it
• Soft fascia, soffit and trim replaced before coating
• Aluminum and vinyl coated with the right product for them
• Repair priced separately from paint on the estimate

Shade, mildew and the north wall

The mature trees that make these neighborhoods pleasant also keep half of every house damp. A north facing wall under an oak stays wet long after the rain has stopped, and it grows mildew. The black speckling on a soffit and the green film on a wall are both alive, and paint over them feeds them.

That comes off with a low pressure wash and a cleaner that kills the growth. High pressure takes the texture off old stucco and pushes water into the wall, which is the last thing a house that already stays damp needs. The cleaner does the work and the pressure just carries it away.

Branches touching a wall are worth cutting back before we paint, because a branch rubbing a finish will wear straight through it. We will point out the ones that matter while we are walking the house with you.

Trim, soffit and the things that rot

Older houses here often have wood trim, wood fascia and sometimes a wood soffit, and Florida finds every one of them. Anything soft gets replaced before it is painted, because paint on rotten wood is the most expensive way to hide a problem for a single season.

Aluminum soffit and vinyl are common on the houses that had work done in the nineties. Those get cleaned and coated with a product that will actually hold on them, rather than the same material that went on the stucco, because the two surfaces want different things.

Inside, the giveaways of a house this age are popcorn ceilings, textured walls and trim that has been painted enough times that the profile has gone soft. Filling, sanding and priming is what makes an old wall read like a new one, and it is where most of the hours in an interior actually go.

Getting a price in Brandon

Call (813) 500-1564 or send the form and we will come and walk it with you. The estimate is free, and on an older house it separates the repair from the painting so you can see exactly what each part costs.

If some of it can wait, we will say so. On a thirty year old house it is often smarter to fix and seal everything now and paint one elevation later than to spread thin paint over all of it at once.