Restucco, Recoat and Coating Cost Calculator

Enter the scope and the house size and this gives you the range from the published per-square-foot rates. No email, no gate.

Which product for which wall

Elastomeric coating, $1.50–$3.50 per square foot. A flexible waterproof membrane that bridges hairline cracks and seals the wall. The right answer for a wall with widespread fine or map cracking that is otherwise sound. It is a coating, not stucco: it will bridge a hairline and it will not hold a moving structural crack.

Recoat, $3–$6 per square foot. A new cement finish coat over a sound base. Restores texture and colour and behaves like stucco, because it is stucco. The right answer when the finish coat has weathered out but the system underneath is fine.

Full restucco, $6–$9 per square foot. Back to paper and lath and rebuilt. The answer when the system itself has failed rather than just its surface.

Specialty finishes, $10–$14 per square foot. Smooth Santa Fe and similar finishes take more skill and more time, and they show every imperfection, which is precisely why they cost more.

Fog or colour coat on one elevation. The targeted option when a repair has left a visible patch on the front of the house. Frequently the cheapest way to make a good repair invisible.

Repairs come first, always

The most common wasted spend in stucco work is coating over stucco that has already let go of the wall. A coating bonds to what is underneath it, and if what is underneath is delaminated, the whole assembly comes off together, usually within a season or two.

Before any coating, the walls get sounded: tapped across their area to find hollow spots. That takes an hour and it is not optional. The hollow stucco page explains how to do it yourself, and it is worth doing before you take anybody’s quote.

The same applies upward. A failed parapet puts water into the top of the wall continuously. Coating the wall below it seals that water in rather than out. Parapets first, walls second, every time.

How long things last in this climate

Worth being realistic, because the manufacturers’ numbers are not written for 3,900 feet.

UV at altitude is harsher and degrades coatings faster than at sea level. Thermal cycling of forty degrees a day works everything. Freeze-thaw in winter attacks anything holding water. Monsoon delivers the year’s water in a few violent weeks.

So treat elastomeric as a periodic maintenance coating rather than a permanent fix. Treat a recoat as a genuine renewal with a long life. Treat a full restucco as the thing you do once in a very long time, and do it properly when you do.

Getting the colour right

Stucco colour is chosen wet and lives dry, in extremely strong light, for decades. Two pieces of practical advice:

Sample on the actual wall, in the actual light, and look at it at different times of day. A colour chosen off a chip in a shop will surprise you.

Go lighter than you think if the house takes full afternoon sun. Dark stucco absorbs heat, and heat is what drives thermal cycling and cracking.

The colour and texture matching page covers the matching side, which matters most when you are coating one elevation rather than all of them.

What to send

Photos of each elevation from far enough back to see the whole wall, close-ups of any cracking or damage, a photo of the parapet top if the house has one, and the approximate floor area. Most whole-house work gets a close estimate from that and a firm number after a measure. We cover Las Cruces, Mesilla, Doña Ana, Anthony, and Hatch.