Stucco Contractor & Stucco Remediation in Magalia, CA | Chico Elite Stucco

Chico Elite Stucco is a stucco contractor working on residential and commercial buildings in Magalia, California, which sits at 2,333 feet on the ridge above the Feather River canyon. You may call us for stucco repair – where a wall has cracked, chipped, or come away from what sits behind it. You may also call us for stucco remediation – we trace the path water takes to get behind a wall rather than just treating the stain it has left on the face of it. Or if a building has never had stucco at all, we provide stucco installation.

We resurface and recoat stucco that has become faded, chalky, uneven, or patchy. Depending on the existing wall and how much movement it needs to handle, that may mean a new cement-plaster finish, an acrylic finish, or an elastomeric coating. We also paint and coat finished stucco and remove and replace sections that are too damaged to repair. If you are not sure what your wall needs, we can inspect it first and explain the options. Our work also includes new construction, decorative stucco details, stone veneer, and interior plaster.

In Magalia, older walls often sit beside newer additions or rebuilt sections, so one of the first things we look at is how closely the new work needs to match what is already there. That affects the materials, the amount of preparation, the sequence of the work, and ultimately the price. We serve Chico and communities throughout Butte County, including Oroville and the ridge, as well as parts of Glenn and Tehama counties. To have a wall inspected and priced, call us at (530) 783-7384 or send the details through our online form.

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Why Choose Chico Elite Stucco for Magalia Stucco Work

A job in Magalia is part of our usual week, not a trip we make once and price as one. What you are quoted comes from looking at the wall in front of us, not from the house next door. Two houses on one street here can be decades apart in age, so what suits one of them can be wrong on the other, and that difference shows up in the finish long after a number has been agreed.

The rest of the reasons to hire us are ones you can check before you agree to anything.

We have more than 15 years of stucco experience and are licensed and insured.
We carry general liability and workers' compensation coverage for the people on your property.
Before anything is mixed, you get a written scope that names the wall system going on and the finish that will sit over it.
The visit costs you nothing and ends with a free estimate.
We work on houses and small commercial buildings alike.

Call us on (530) 783-7384 to arrange a visit, or use our quote form to tell us what the wall is doing. We also work along the ridge in Paradise.

Get a Free Estimate (530) 783-7384

Stucco Contractor Services for Magalia, California

Whatever your wall needs, the first thing we settle is which job it actually is. Magalia streets have older and newer walls side by side, so the wall standing next to yours usually decides the answer. Everything below is work Chico Elite Stucco does in Magalia itself, and choosing between these jobs is where the work with a stucco contractor begins.

Stucco Painting & Coatings

Spraying a coating onto a prepared stucco wall

We renew the color of stucco that is still sound underneath but has become worn or faded at the surface. Depending on the wall, we may apply an acrylic coating for fresh color, an elastomeric coating where a more flexible film is needed, or a fog coat, which is a thin cement wash that restores color without covering the existing texture. On wooded lots, tree cover can keep walls damp and allow dirt to build up, so the finish may deteriorate faster from moisture and grime than from direct sunlight. Each side of a house is called an elevation, and because some elevations receive more shade and moisture than others, they often need different treatments.

Stucco Installation

Plasterer applying a stucco finish coat to an exterior wall

Stucco installation adds a plaster exterior to a house that has never had stucco before. We first install a weather-resistive barrier, a protective sheet that helps keep water away from the wood framing. Metal lath goes over that barrier, creating a steel mesh that the wet plaster can grip as it is applied. On a Magalia home, we also agree on the finish with you before the first coat goes on, so the texture and appearance are settled before the wall is built.

Residential Stucco

Pale yellow Spanish-style stucco home behind a lawn and front path

Residential stucco work often involves looking beyond the single wall that first caught your attention. Different sides of a house can age at very different rates. An elevation facing the canyon may take more weather, while one shaded by trees can stay damp longer and develop its own set of problems. That means each part of the exterior may need a different level of repair, recoating, or replacement. If the house has been expanded over the years, we also look at how the original walls and newer additions fit together. We can then price the entire exterior as one scope, with the work planned so the finished house looks consistent from one section to the next.

Stucco Inspection

Taking a moisture reading at the base of a stucco wall

A stucco inspection gives you a clear explanation of what is happening with the wall and what, if anything, needs to be done. We tap the surface to find hollow areas where the plaster may have separated from the material behind it, even when the face still looks intact. We also check around windows, trim, and the base of the wall to see how water is getting in and how it drains away. An inspection is often the simplest and least expensive way to determine whether you actually need a repair, recoating, remediation, or replacement before committing to the work.

Stucco Repair

Gloved hand troweling a patch onto an olive-toned stucco wall

Repair deals with failure in one area rather than across a wall. We cut back to material that is still sound, replace the lath where it has rusted away, and rebuild the patch in polymer-modified mortar, a cement mix that bonds to old work. Cracks that still move get an elastomeric sealant, which stays flexible, instead of a hard filler. The patch is matched back into the finish around it.

Stucco Removal & Replacement

Worker cutting away failed stucco at the base of a wall

Some walls are too far gone to patch, and the plaster comes off down to the framing. We take it off one side of the house at a time rather than opening the whole building at once. Pre-1980 construction gets tested for asbestos and lead before anything is disturbed. With the wall open we look at the sheathing, the boards under the plaster, and then a new barrier and new lath go back on.

Commercial Stucco

Orange stucco commercial building with a blue-trimmed arched window and balcony

Commercial stucco uses the same materials and repair methods we apply to homes, but the work has to fit around an active property. We work on shops, offices, and community buildings along the ridge, planning the job in sections so entrances, walkways, and the areas people use can remain open whenever possible. Before the crew arrives, we agree on the schedule, access points, and order of work with you so there are fewer surprises once the project starts. For larger buildings, we can move from one elevation or section to the next, keeping the site usable while the stucco is repaired, recoated, replaced, or newly installed.

Stone Veneer & Stucco

Home combining stone veneer with a stucco exterior

Stone veneer is thin stone set over lath and a scratch coat, the rough first layer of plaster, so it is laid by the same trade as the wall around it. The joint where stone meets plaster is flashed with metal that sheds water rather than filled. It turns up most on a raised base, where the stone skirt of a newer house meets the slope it was built into.

Stucco Plastering

Gloved hand drawing a trowel of plaster across a textured wall

We also plaster the surfaces around a house, not just the exterior walls themselves. Soffits, porch and patio ceilings, garden and site walls, chimneys and parapets can all be finished with the same plaster material. Because these areas are often more exposed than walls protected by a roof overhang, they tend to show wear sooner and are often among the first surfaces that need attention.

New Construction Stucco

Worker plastering a wall from a scaffold platform against a blue sky

On a new construction project, we come in as one of several trades working to the builder's schedule. The lath and water-resistive barrier go up at the proper stage of the build, and we coordinate the flashing with the roofers and window installers so each layer is installed in the right sequence and nothing gets covered before it should.

Decorative Stucco

Decorative stucco work adds raised detail and definition to a plaster wall. Foam trim, bands, sills, window surrounds and score lines are shaped, finished and coated as part of the wall rather than simply attached afterward. These details can break up a large flat elevation, frame openings and give the exterior more architectural character. Any feature that sits under tree drip or another regular source of water still has to be designed to drain properly, so it performs as well as it looks.

Interior Stucco

Interior stucco and plaster can bring the same hand-finished character indoors, with finishes ranging from a visible troweled texture to a flat, smooth surface. We apply these finishes by hand to interior walls, accent areas and architectural features where you want more depth and texture than standard painted drywall. A masonry or framed fireplace can also be refinished with plaster without rebuilding the existing surround, making it possible to update the look while keeping the structure in place. Because interior plastering is protected from rain and changing outdoor conditions, this work can continue through days when exterior stucco has to wait for the weather to improve.

Stucco Resurfacing

Troweling an integrally colored acrylic stucco finish

Stucco resurfacing gives a sound existing wall a new finish without requiring a full tear-off. When the underlying plaster is still solid, we can apply a fresh finish coat over the surface to restore its appearance and even out areas that have become worn or weathered. A redash, which is a fresh sprayed layer of plaster, also adds body and texture back to the wall where a coating would only change the color. It is a practical option when the wall itself is performing well but the exterior finish is showing its age.

What a Stucco Contractor Faces on Magalia Walls

On one Magalia street, walls finished decades apart stand side by side, and often on a single property, where an addition meets the original wall. That leaves a stucco contractor with a join to solve before a finish, because the new plaster has to meet a wall that has already weathered and is sound enough to hold it.

Working a fresh finish coat onto an existing wall

Matching a New Wall to the One It Meets

A texture match means reproducing the surface pattern of the existing wall in the new plaster. We work it up on a sample panel, a small trial area finished against your wall rather than picked from a chart, because the target is the weathered wall as it stands now. We record the iron-oxide pigment that gives the sample its color, so a later patch can be matched to the same finish coat. A match is close rather than identical, and we say so before we quote you. Where the join lands often does more than the last degree of closeness, so we end the new work at a corner, a band, or a change of plane.

What Has to Be True of the Older Wall First

New plaster is only as sound as the substrate it is tied to, the sheathing on the frame and the metal lath over it. We tap the older wall and listen for the hollow note that means the finish has let go, and where the history of the house is unclear we open a small area rather than price blind. What we find determines whether the new work can tie in, because a new wall joined to a failing one fails at the join. If water is already getting behind the old finish, that is a separate question. What we found goes into the written scope before a number is attached to it.

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About Magalia, California

Magalia is an unincorporated community in Butte County, spread along a wooded ridge at 2,333 feet, looking down into the Feather River Canyon, north along that ridge from Paradise. It was called Dogtown before it took the name Magalia, and the gold found here in 1859 is remembered at the Dogtown Nugget discovery site. The Magalia Community Church, in the older part of the community, is listed on the National Register.

That gold came out of the Willard Claim, a hydraulic mine in the Feather River Canyon northeast of town. Much of the newer building on the ridge followed the Camp Fire in 2018, which is why your street can have houses only a few years old alongside houses that have stood for generations.

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Where We Work In and Around Magalia

Magalia runs along a stretch of ridge, and the places we are called to are not all inside it. Paradise Pines and Old Skyway are inside the community itself. Stirling City and DeSabla are separate communities nearby, not districts of Magalia, and we work in both. Each one puts a different kind of property in front of us, and a different piece of work with it.

Paradise Pines: Recoating Walls That Sit Under Tree Cover

Paradise Pines is the largest subdivision inside Magalia, laid out in lots and governed in part by its own property owners association. Those lots are heavily wooded, so a wall there stands in shade for most of the day. Shade keeps a wall damp, and the shaded sides collect dirt, green growth and tree litter. We wash those walls and let them dry before any acrylic or elastomeric coating goes on, because a coating laid over a soiled surface lifts away from it.

Stirling City: New Stucco Further Up the Ridge

Stirling City stands about six miles up the ridge from Magalia, at roughly 3,570 feet. The Diamond Match Company founded it in 1903 as a lumber town, and the sawmill closed in the early 1970s, so much of the housing there was put up within one stretch of years and built much the same way. When we give a house up there its first stucco wall, we set that job its own dates rather than adding it to a week of Magalia work.

Old Skyway: Interior Plaster in the Older Part of Magalia

Old Skyway is the older routing through the community, the road that carried traffic before the newer route. We do interior plaster along it. That means wall and ceiling finishes troweled smooth by hand, and a fireplace surround refinished rather than torn out and rebuilt. This work goes ahead in a room you are still living in, so we close the room off and finish one area at a time.

DeSabla: Repairs Inside Magalia's Own Postal Area

DeSabla is a small unincorporated community about three miles along the ridge at 2,762 feet, which grew up around a power station built there in 1903. Its ZIP code is 95954, the same one Magalia uses. A cracked or broken wall at a DeSabla address is therefore quoted as Magalia work rather than as an out-of-area job. We seal the opened joints with elastomeric sealant and fill the broken face with polymer-modified mortar.

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Flaking, failed coating on a stucco wall

Magalia Property, Access and Local Conditions

Exposure is the plain description of what a wall stands open to, and here it changes from one side of a house to the next. A parcel looking out over the canyon and a parcel with forest close behind it put different demands on the same plaster, so we read a Magalia property wall by wall.

One-coat stucco base applied in a single pass

Walls on the Canyon Side of the Ridge

The elevations facing the canyon are struck by rain carried on the wind and are exposed to open sun, while the sheltered faces of the same house sit out of both. Those canyon-facing walls dull, chalk and open up well before the others do. On them the metal that moves water off and out of the wall does more good than whichever finish is laid over it. Flashing sends water around a window or a roof join, and the weep screed is the strip along the bottom that lets trapped water drain away. We price the sides separately, because they rarely arrive at the same condition together.

Parcels That Back Onto Forest

A wall standing in tree shade dries slowly after rain, and limbs touching or overhanging it hold that damp against the finish. Leaves and needles build up along the ground at the base of the wall, which is the point where water that gets behind the plaster is meant to leave. Once that opening is buried, the bottom of the wall stays wet. We ask that growth be cut back and litter raked clear before work starts, so the base is visible and can be worked on, and the finish lasts longer on a wall where that strip is kept clear afterward.

To have your walls looked at one elevation at a time, call (530) 783-7384.

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Permits and Inspections on a Magalia Job

Two communities a few minutes apart on this ridge send the same stucco work to two different counters. Which one your job answers to is settled by a boundary you cannot see from the road rather than by how close you are to an office.

Why Magalia and Paradise Route the Same Job Differently

A building permit is the written approval a local authority gives before work starts, along with the visits it makes to check that work. Magalia has no town government of its own, so that authority here is Butte County, and its Department of Development Services handles the permits and the inspections.

Paradise, the next community along the ridge, is an incorporated town and runs its own building division. Your parcel sits on one side of that line or the other, and that decides which body reviews your job. We ask the authority what your job needs before the work is booked. One house on a street can follow a third path, because alterations to a manufactured home are reviewed and inspected by California's Department of Housing and Community Development rather than by a local building department. Tell us at the estimate if that is the house you own.

Rules That Come With the Subdivision Rather Than the County

A property owners association covers Paradise Pines, the large subdivision inside the community, and it keeps architectural rules of its own for exterior work. Those rules come with the parcel rather than with the county, so a job there can answer to two sets of rules at once, and satisfying one says nothing about the other. We cannot tell you what the association's rules cover, because we were not able to confirm them.

Asking the association what an exterior change needs is a short step, and the time to take it is before a scope is written. A requirement that surfaces afterward stops the work mid-wall and sends it back for a revised scope and a second start. The Contractors State License Board defines the C-35 Lathing and Plastering classification around lath, metal stud and channel work, and plaster coatings.

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Stucco Remediation in Magalia

When water has gotten in behind a wall, we stop it and rebuild what it has damaged. That work is stucco remediation. It is a different scope from a repair, which restores a failed area of the finish, and from a replacement, which strips a wall and starts again. If your wall keeps staining after the surface has been patched, it usually belongs in the third group.

When the Problem Is Behind the Wall, Not On It

Water rarely enters where the mark appears; it runs down and sideways behind the finish first.

The signs that point behind the wall are staining that returns after a patch, a hollow area that keeps spreading, efflorescence, and damp at the base of a wall or under a window rather than at the crack. Efflorescence is the white powdery deposit left when water carries salts out of the wall and dries on the surface.

Before anything is closed up we find the path the water is taking, taking readings across the wall with a meter to see how far the wet area reaches. The correction is usually a piece of flashing, the overlap of the barrier behind the finish, or a detail above the stain. The junction where a newer addition meets an older wall is a common place to start.

What a Remediation Scope Covers, and Where It Stops

A remediation scope takes in the water path, the layers behind the finish that the water has reached, and the finish put back to match the wall around it. Where mold is visible, we do not test it and we do not remove it. A qualified independent specialist handles that assessment, because mold testing and removal are their own trade, and we carry on with the wall itself. What we found is written down before the work is priced.

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Written stucco scope and estimate on a clipboard

Crew applying a stucco finish coat to a wall

Stucco Questions From Magalia Property Owners

If only one elevation is being redone, will it match the rest of the house?

Closely, and we settle how closely before you commit. Your older finish coat has weathered, so the target is the wall as it stands today rather than the color it started as, which is why the sample panel is worked up outdoors against the wall itself.

Paradise has its own building department. Does our job in Magalia go through them?

No. Magalia is unincorporated, so the county is the building authority here. Paradise, being a town in its own right, has a department of its own. Which counter you deal with follows the jurisdiction your parcel sits in.

Our house looks out over the canyon. Does that side need anything different?

Usually yes, and the difference is in the water-shedding detail rather than a different material, so the flashing and the weep screed get more attention there. It also changes the order of work. If the whole house is not being done at once, the canyon side is worth doing first.

Our house was here before the newer ones on the street. Is what is behind our stucco likely to be different?

Often, yes, and that is why we look before we price. Older walls here frequently have previous repairs, so what sits behind the finish is more often somebody's later work than the original build. Where no paperwork survives, opening a small area is the only way to find out what is behind the finish.

How close is a texture match, realistically?

Close enough that you stop seeing it, and we say so beforehand where it will not be. A hand-troweled finish varies across the original wall, so the honest target is the range of the existing texture rather than one spot of it.

Do you work in Magalia itself, or only down in Chico?

In Magalia itself, and on the ridge generally. Paradise Pines, Old Skyway and Stirling City sit inside the same coverage, so a property just off the edge of Magalia is almost certainly covered as well. A small job is still worth asking about.

Get a Free Stucco Estimate in Magalia

It starts with someone from Chico Elite Stucco standing in front of your wall in Magalia, reading what has happened to it. You then get the work we propose in writing, so you can read it over before you agree to anything. Call or use our online form now for a free estimate.

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