Preparing a stucco wall for new windows in Riverside

A hollow knock under the knuckle, right below the sill, usually means the stucco has let go of the paper behind it. Every teardown window installation riverside donny most has logged shows the same thing: the damage was there before the old frame came out, and the new one only gets blamed for it. Window work on a Riverside, CA house starts with the wall, not the box on the truck.

Tap the wall before any cutting starts

Walk the exterior with a screwdriver handle and tap a foot out from each opening. Solid stucco rings. Loose stucco sounds like a drum. Hairline cracks running off the corners of a frame are normal on Inland Empire houses that have baked and cooled for thirty years, but a crack wide enough to take a dime means water has been getting in behind it.

Cutting the return without wrecking the field

A retrofit job on a stucco house leaves the old frame's flange buried in the wall, so the crew cuts only the interior stop and pulls the sashes. A full replacement means saw-cutting the stucco back to the framing in a clean rectangle, about two inches out on every side, with a diamond blade and a vacuum on the saw.

Checking the rough opening for rot and square

Once the frame is out, probe the sill plate and the bottom of the studs with an awl. Sound wood resists it. Soft wood lets the point sink in. Measure both diagonals of the rough opening, and if they differ by more than an eighth of an inch the opening is racked and needs shimming, or the new vinyl window will bind in the track on the first hot afternoon.

Dealing with the paper and the wire

Stucco houses built in the seventies and eighties often have a single layer of felt paper, torn at every old window. The new flashing has to tie into whatever paper is left, lapped so water runs out over it. Where the paper is gone, a strip of self-adhesive membrane goes onto clean sheathing first. The metal lath at the edge gets cut back and bent flat so it does not telegraph through the patch.

Protecting the open wall for the day

An opening cut at eight in the morning should be closed by evening. Riverside rarely gets a surprise storm, but winter fronts off the coast do arrive with half a day of warning, and an open stud bay soaks up a lot of water in a short time.

What the prep leaves behind

When prep is done properly the opening is square, the wood is sound, the paper is lapped and the stucco edge is clean. Everything after that, from the sill pan to the double pane glass, is easy to do right.