Stucco & Painting in Rockvale

Exterior work in Rockvale, Colorado

Rockvale sits at about 5,460 feet in Fremont County, a few miles north of Florence on the old coalfield. The town grew as a coal camp, and a lot of the housing stock is still small early 1900s frame cottages on modest lots, mixed with later ranch homes and manufactured houses. Wood siding that old holds paint only if the prep is real, so house painting here starts with scraping, sanding the edges flat and spot priming bare wood.

Plenty of these houses had stucco or a cement parge applied over the original frame walls at some point. That coat is usually thin, sits on old lath, and cracks along the stud lines and at window corners. Stucco repair starts with sounding the wall to find the hollow spots, because painting over delaminated stucco just traps the water and buys you one season.

Rockvale sits on open ground with little to break the wind between the Wet Mountains and the Arkansas valley, so wind-driven rain hits the south and west walls and hail comes through most summers. Metal and low-slope roofs on outbuildings take that worst. Roof coating over a properly treated, rust-free surface adds a flexible membrane that moves with the panel instead of cracking off it.