Stucco repair costs in Buffalo

Buffalo winters don't stay frozen. The National Weather Service describes them as cloudy, cold and snowy, but changeable, with frequent thaws and rain mixed in. So your walls see liquid water all winter long, not just snow sitting on the ground.

How much snow they see depends on your address. More than half of the area's yearly snowfall comes from lake-effect bands, which are very local, and areas south of the city get much more of it than areas to the north. The lake machine can start as early as mid-November and peaks in December. Once Lake Erie freezes, in mid to late January, it mostly shuts down.

The city's houses are old. The Census Bureau's survey counts about 61 percent of homes in Buffalo as built before 1940, so plenty of stucco walls here have stood through more than 80 winters.

Stucco on this shore has a famous example, too. Frank Lloyd Wright finished Graycliff, a summer home on the bluffs above the lake, in 1931, and its buildings are lakeshore stone and ochre stucco. When restoration began there, the architects studied Wright's own drawings and specifications at the University at Buffalo archives before they touched the exterior plaster. An old wall rewards that kind of homework, on any house.