Stucco repair costs in Wilmington

Hurricane Florence made landfall near Wrightsville Beach on the morning of September 14, 2018, after creeping toward the coast at about 5 knots. Its rain bands kept training over the same strip from Wilmington to Elizabethtown, and parts of that strip got more than 30 inches. Floodwater closed every road into New Hanover County, I-40 included, and cut the county off for several days. Many homes and businesses took wind damage to roofs, garage doors and siding.

A storm like that is hard on any wall, and in the city's historic districts, the repair has rules. Wilmington's design standards count stucco among the historic wall materials to keep and preserve. They note that the city's bungalows often combine stucco, shingles and brick. They're open to synthetic stucco, or EIFS, as a replacement, but only if it matches the historic material in size, texture and look. They also warn that EIFS is more easily damaged, so it should be kept away from doors and the lower part of a wall, and it fits best where the street can't see it.

The standards also don't allow painting or waterproofing the exposed part of a foundation. So if your bungalow has a stucco base and a contractor offers to seal it, that's off the table in a historic district.