Stucco repair costs in New York

In New York, a lot of stucco work is really brownstone work. That soft sandstone face wears and peels, and the Landmarks Preservation Commission's staff can approve a patch or a resurface in brownstone-tinted stucco. The commission counts that resurfacing as a repair, not a replacement. Stoops and areaway walls in historic districts can also be rebuilt in stucco over masonry, though not at individual landmarks.

If your house is one of the city's more than 38,000 landmark properties, most of them in 157 historic districts, you need an LPC permit before work starts. Staff can approve a stucco patch done the traditional way: three coats over lath, or two coats straight onto masonry. They can't approve most modern systems, EIFS included. And they won't sign off on resurfacing a whole brownstone front unless the stone is in extremely poor condition. Expect them to approve resurfacing select areas instead, like the stoop or the base of the building.

Good resurfacing is slow, careful work. LPC's own method has the crew chisel back to sound stone, drill a key pattern for the patch, and build it up in coats no thicker than 3/8 inch. Water that gets behind a skim coat is what pops it off after a hard winter, so that prep matters more than the finish coat.