Stucco repair costs in Portland

On the afternoon of July 4, 1866, a fire that started on Commercial Street swept across Portland. It destroyed 1,800 buildings, 1,200 of them homes, and left 10,000 people homeless. The city was almost completely rebuilt within two years, and that rebuilding gave Portland its brick, Victorian character, Greater Portland Landmarks says. Most commercial and multi-family buildings went up in brick and granite to cut the risk of another fire. New houses spread onto Munjoy Hill and into the suburbs at Deering.

So brick, not stucco, sets the look here, and a stucco house in Portland lives in a colder zone than southern New England does. Federal energy maps put Cumberland County in climate zone 6A, a step colder than the zone 5A that covers every county in Massachusetts and Connecticut.

The ocean is creeping closer, too. Sea level at Portland has risen about 7.4 inches since 1912, according to Maine's federal climate summary, and it's projected to rise another 1 to 4 feet by 2100. If your house sits on low ground near the harbor, salt spray and higher storm tides can be part of what your walls face over the next few decades.