The best exterior painting window in Kissimmee opens next month, and most paint jobs fail before the first gallon is opened. Not because of the paint. Because of what happened to the wall in the 48 hours before it.
Three things to check on your own house this weekend.
Dry time. If a wall was pressure washed or soaked by an afternoon storm, it is not ready the next morning. Water sits inside stucco and pushes new paint off from behind. That is why the failure shows up as bubbles and peeling on one wall a few months later. A wall needs a full stretch of dry weather and a moisture check before anyone opens a can.
Mildew and chalk. Wiping bleach over a mildew patch does not kill it. It has to be treated, scrubbed, rinsed and dried, or it grows right back through the new coating within a season. Then run your palm across the stucco. If it comes back powdery, the old coating has broken down and the wall needs a bonding primer, not another topcoat.
Cracks. Hairline stucco cracks are normal movement, and paint will not bridge them. If a crack is wide enough to catch a credit card edge, or it runs in a stair-step pattern near a window or corner, that gets addressed before paint, not with paint.
We see this every week on jobs across Kissimmee, Orlando and Winter Park, and after 20 plus years in this climate the pattern never changes. Prep is the job. Paint is the finish.
