Stucco repair costs in Richmond

Around Richmond, plenty of houses come from the suburban boom: more than one in four homes in the metro were built in the 1990s or 2000s. Some of them got synthetic stucco, called EIFS, across the front.

Virginia learned about EIFS the hard way. In 1997 the General Assembly asked the state housing board to study it, and a committee met here and in Chesapeake. It found the field of the wall was rarely the problem. Water got in around windows, doors, decks and dormers, then got trapped against the sheathing and studs, often with no sign until the damage was serious. The committee recommended that the state allow only drainable EIFS on wood-frame houses and ban the barrier kind there.

So if your house dates from that era, find out which kind you have before anyone patches a crack. A barrier system with soft spots under the windows is a bigger job than a photo shows.

Inside Richmond's Old and Historic Districts, the Commission of Architectural Review gets a say. In-kind repairs can usually be approved by staff in one to three days; a full certificate takes 30 to 60. Work nobody can see from a street, sidewalk or alley needs no certificate, and unpainted masonry may not be painted.