Service
Stucco Repair and Painting in Ottawa & Gatineau
Stucco crack repair and coating that seals out moisture before it gets behind the wall.
Stucco repair and painting in Ottawa starts with a question nobody on page one asks you: which stucco do you have? Traditional cement render and modern acrylic stucco over foam wear the same name, crack for different reasons, and take different repairs and coatings. We identify the wall, cut out and blend the cracks, then coat it with something breathable that sheds water rather than trapping it.
Stucco is rarely the only thing due on an elevation. The wall is cleaned first with power washing at a pressure the render will take, soft sills and split casings around the openings go to light carpentry and wood repairs before any coating, masonry on the same house is a brick painting or limewashing question rather than a stucco one, and a whole face coming due in one season folds into exterior painting in Ottawa.
Seventy-seven days a year, the wall freezes and thaws
Water in a stucco crack only matters because it turns to ice, and Ottawa gives it more chances than most Canadian cities. Environment and Climate Change Canada's 1981-2010 normals for Ottawa Macdonald-Cartier International Airport record, month by month, the days that drop to 0 C and the days that never rise above it. The difference is the count of days that thaw and re-freeze: roughly 77 a year, about 16.5 in March and 15.7 in November. Every cycle widens the crack. The City's Property Standards By-law No. 2013-416 puts the same duty in writing at section 17(1).
What is included
Identifying the wall first
Cement render is hard and sounds solid. Acrylic stucco and EIFS are a thin skin over foam and sound hollow. Which you have decides the patch material, the coating, and whether a crack is cosmetic.
Cracks cut out, filled and blended
Opened up, cleaned back to sound material, filled and textured to match. The City's property standards by-law asks for exactly that: repairs in visually similar material, blended with what is beside them.
Joints, flashing and penetrations
Stucco water problems arrive at an edge rather than through the field: window and door perimeters, the sill line, vents and fixtures. Failed sealant there is renewed.
Where we stop, said plainly
We repair and coat stucco. Installing a new system, re-rendering an elevation and remediating a wet EIFS wall are trades of their own, and you hear that at the estimate.
Our process
Walk it and identify it
We check what the render is, sound the wall for hollow areas, map the cracks and look at every opening. The scope names the repairs, not just the paint.
Wash and let it dry
Cleaned at a pressure stucco will take, plantings covered, run-off kept out of storm drains. Then it dries properly.
Repair and blend
Cracks filled with a compatible material, joints re-sealed, and every repair textured back into the surrounding surface.
Prime, coat and walk it
Patched and porous areas take a masonry primer so they do not flash through. The topcoat goes on inside a window that lets it cure.
What does stucco repairs & painting cost in Ottawa?
No square-foot number is worth quoting before someone has stood at the wall, because the repair is the variable and the coating is not. What moves it: how much wall and how many elevations; the type of render, since patching acrylic over foam differs from patching hard cement; the number and width of the cracks, because crazing a coating can bridge costs almost nothing while a dozen open cracks is a day of work before any colour goes on; how much of the wall sounds hollow; the sealant at windows, doors and the sill line; and access. Your estimate itemises the repair separately from the coating, so quotes compare on the same basis.
Patch material is matched to the render, because a hard cement patch in a flexible acrylic wall cracks back out along its own edge. Coatings are masonry-appropriate acrylics and elastomerics chosen for permeability: the wall has to shed rain and still release moisture, which is why a tight film is wrong on stucco. Product categories, not brand endorsements.
Want a real number for your stucco repairs & painting project in Ottawa or Gatineau?
Traditional cement stucco or acrylic stucco and EIFS
| Consideration | Traditional cement stucco | Acrylic stucco / EIFS over foam |
|---|---|---|
| How to tell | Hard and dense, and tapping it sounds solid | Thin and flexible, and tapping it sounds hollow |
| Why it cracks | Curing shrinkage, building movement, freeze-thaw widening | Movement at board joints, especially window and door corners |
| What a crack means | A water-entry problem in a wall that can dry out | A possible path into the insulation, where water has nowhere to go |
| Repair approach | Cut out, compatible cementitious patch, re-texture, coat | Flexible patch and mesh where the system calls for it, then a coating that moves |
Stucco or parging? Ottawa searches for both, and they are not the same thing
Almost every Ottawa business ranking for stucco calls itself stucco and parging, so homeowners assume the two words describe one job. Parging is a thin mortar coat on the exposed part of a foundation wall, and the City of Ottawa's Property Standards By-law lists it under foundations at section 15(1). Stucco is a cladding on the storeys above. If what is crumbling is the grey band where the house meets the ground, that is parging, and it belongs to a masonry contractor rather than to us.
Stucco Repairs & Painting: common questions
Yes, and the climate is the argument. Environment and Climate Change Canada's 1981-2010 normals for the Ottawa airport work out to roughly 77 days a year when the temperature thaws above freezing and drops back below it. Water in an open crack expands every one of those times.
Repair is usually right when the render is sound and the problem is cracking, damage or a tired finish. It stops being right when large areas sound hollow or the wall is holding moisture. We sound the wall before quoting and tell you which you have.
A hairline crack in sound cement render is within reach of a careful homeowner. Two things catch people out. Texture, because a patch that is structurally fine still reads as a scar unless it is blended in. And diagnosis, because a crack at a window corner on an acrylic system over foam is a water path, and filling it only hides that.
A breathable, masonry-appropriate coating rather than an ordinary house paint. Stucco holds and releases moisture, so the finish has to resist rain while letting the wall dry. A non-permeable film traps water behind it and blisters. Elastomerics can also bridge hairline crazing.
Worth asking whenever an older wall has been coated before. Health Canada's guidance is that a home built before 1960 probably contains lead-based paint, that one built between 1960 and 1990 may contain it on the exterior, and that a home built after 1990 should not. Health Canada also says sanders, heat guns and blowlamps are the wrong tools on it. Where age puts it in question we recommend testing and use lead-safe practices, which is a method we follow rather than a certification we hold.