Commerical Stucco Contractor

Despite popular suggestion to paint your foundation wall, we at Alasya Construction, a certified stucco contractor in Toronto and the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), would suggest NOT TO PAINT your foundation walls. We do not recommend any form of painting on foundation walls because any required repair involves grinding and a lot of labour and money. You should only paint, assuming that you are just too keen on painting, if you have treated the existing substrate and can warranty that no issues will arise in the upcoming years. Otherwise, you have to grind the area completey, apply a cementitious application, and re-paint it.  Foundation walls should always be free of any cracks and flaking regardless of what work you wish to do. You can achieve this by grinding the area and apply a cementitious finish with a fiberglass mesh to treat joints and crevices. Upon ensure proper curing and at least one-two coats of application and floating, we recommend an trowel based acryclic stucco finish and float on it. This will not only be cosmetically appealling but strenthen the existing substrate. If any future work is required, there will not be an issues with bonding which is the common issue when you paint it as it does not allow for bonding and poses as a barrier between two cementitious applications.

As a “stucco contractor near me” in Toronto an the GTA we can say that acrylic stucco finish can be applied over wood and brick provided it is first treated with specific material. EIFS stucco manufacturers like DuRock Alfacing and Durabond have material that will allow you to apply a specific material over wood and brick which can then be used to apply the stucco finish you wish to achieve. This is on a case by case basis and depending on where you in the Toronto or GTA. As a client, you need to be aware of your area and the climate before you select any sort of exterior cladding substrate.

The two main methods of applying stucco in Toronto and the GTA are trowel and spray application. The most common way of applying acrylic stucco is however trowel based. Ideally, one applicator would apply the acrylic stucco finish with a hawk and trowel and the other stucco applicator would float it to smoothen and texture the substrate. Upon curing you should not notice any imperfections. 

The short answer is it depends. Depending on the height and width of the area you are covering you may or may not run reveal joints. The purpose of having reveal joints is to break the wall into areas of work spaces and to ensure that any cracks that may happen do happen where the reveal joints are. As a stucco contractor in Toronto and GTA we typically run at least one reveal joint for a two storey building of about 22 feet high. The higher, the more. When running the reveal lines we try to take into consideration openings like windows and doors so it typically meets the corners of the windows. Reveal joints can also be used for cosmetic purposes as well so you the sky is the limit when deciding to go for reveal lines.

In Toronto and GTA many stucco contractors and EIFS applicators use reveal joints like expansion joints. This is not the case. Expansion joints in EIFS application is a complete division of one area to the other. Reveal joints are crevices that is achieve by burning the EPS foam, cutting the area off to divide the wall. However, the area that is cut off is not wholy cut off. Of the standard 2 inch EPS foam that is used in Toronto and the GTA, about 1 to 1.5 inches may be cut off or burnt off with a unique tool that most stucco applicators have as part of their tools. Reveal joints can be V-joint or  U-joint and the depth and width can be changed. You can design the stucco EPS cladding so that it is not completey flat and uniform looking. This is very common for stucco contractors in Toronto, Vaughan, and the remaining GTA.