Stucco & Painting in Florence

Exterior work in Florence, Colorado

Florence sits at 5,181 feet in Fremont County, in the Arkansas valley with the Wet Mountains rising to the south. This was an oil and coal town before it was an antique town. Colorado's first commercial oil wells were drilled in the Florence field, and the money built the Victorian brick and frame housing that still fills the residential streets around the historic Main Street district.

Century-old wood on a Florence house is not the same substrate as new fiber cement. The grain is open, the old films are brittle, and lead-era coatings can sit underneath. Prep is careful and slow: wash, scrape to sound, sand, spot prime bare wood and any tannin-bleeding areas, then two finish coats. Rushed house painting on these homes peels in a couple of seasons.

Downtown Florence is masonry with stucco and parapet details, and those parapets are where water gets in. Cracked stucco on a parapet cap wicks moisture down into the wall and blows the coating off in the first hard freeze. Stucco repair and commercial painting go together on those buildings. Flat and low-slope roofs behind them take roof coating.