By November I felt we were on borrowed time. It was CRAZY that we hadn’t had real rain yet. I was super paranoid about mold and warped wood and really didn’t want the framing and plywood to get wet. I hassled the contractor daily about the stucco schedule. I really just wanted to get to the first step with the install of water-proof paper and chicken wire (lath). Just getting to this stage is good protection from regular rain.

There was one wall on the second floor of the house that they hadn’t gotten too, so I talked the workers on site to help me put up a tarp to keep the plywood dry. I think they thought I was weird, but I felt better about it.

A few weeks into December we got the “scratch” coat on. This means they had all the window flashing in and put up a first layer of stucco that was sort of raked for texture. This provides a very solid water-proof layer, but needs about 2 weeks to set before applying the second layer: the brown coat. They then apply the final finishing coat 2-4 weeks after the brown coat. The final coat requires 4 weeks of dry time before we can apply paint.

Basically, after install of scratch coat, we still have a minimum of 8-10 weeks before we can finish the exterior. Not sure what happened to the stucco subs though. They seem to have skipped town. 6 weeks after scratch coat and no sign of them…