The Crack & Repair Standard

Every house moves, and every house cracks. What separates a lasting paint job from a callback is not whether a painter fills cracks — it is whether they know which cracks to fill, how to fill them so the repair lasts, and when a crack is a sign of something a coating should never cover. Most companies guess. We use a standard.

Our principle is the same on every surface: we repair what our work controls, we don't over-repair what the paint will handle, and we stop and flag what is beyond cosmetic repair. Over-repairing wastes your money and often looks worse than the crack. Under-repairing causes callbacks. Hiding a structural crack under paint guarantees one. This standard removes the guesswork — and it's the same standard whether anyone is watching or not.

The Test You Can Run Yourself

Here is the standard we use on stucco, and you can check it with something in your wallet right now. A business card is about 0.013 of an inch thick. A credit card is about 0.030. We carry both.

The rule is simple: if a business card can enter the crack, it gets filled. If the crack is too fine for a business card to enter, it is a true hairline — our coating covers it, and we will not patch it, because patching a hairline creates a raised, textured bump that telegraphs through the paint worse than the crack ever would.

Why this matters to you: You can walk your own home before we start and know what we'll do at any crack — fill it or leave it — just by holding up a business card. No upsell on cracks that don't need it. No surprises. That is a standard you can verify, not a claim you have to trust.

Stucco — Classified by Width

Stucco is rigid — essentially concrete without rocks — so it cracks when the house moves. Our 100% acrylic EVERSHIELD® system is a high-quality coating, but it is not an elastomeric — it will not "bridge" a wide crack the way a thick rubberized coating claims to. So we match the repair to the width. Here is exactly how we classify every stucco crack:

True hairline — under about 1/32 inch

A business card will not enter. Spider-web, crazing, fine shrinkage lines. We clean the surface and leave it — no filling. The cured two-coat film covers a crack this fine, and patching it would look worse. This is the only "leave it" category, and knowing that is what keeps your walls from looking patched.

Fine — about 1/32 to 1/16 inch

A business card enters; a credit card will not. This band must be filled — an acrylic coating will not hold over it unfilled. We brush a paintable filler into the cleaned crack, texture it to match the surrounding wall, spot-prime, and paint. Done right, the repair disappears.

Narrow — 1/16 to 1/8 inch

A credit card is tight or just enters. We clean the crack, fill it with a knife-grade elastomeric or textured patching compound, feather the edges, texture to match, prime, and paint.

Moderate — 1/8 to 1/4 inch

A credit card enters freely. Full repair. We open (rout) the crack to a clean profile so the repair material has something to hold to — not a thin smear over the top that fails in a season. We clear the dust, fill with proper sealant or patching compound tooled flush, texture to match, prime, and apply both coats.

Wide or structural — over 1/4 inch, or any sign of movement

Any crack wider than 1/4 inch, or showing displacement, stair-stepping, a diagonal pattern, or offset edges — especially running from window or door corners. We stop. We do not paint over it. A crack like this is a sign the house is moving, and no coating should hide that. We flag it for you and explain what we see before any cosmetic work happens.

Drywall — Classified by How It Fails

Many Arizona homes have some exterior drywall — typically on covered patio ceilings and entry lids. Where it's present, it doesn't crack by width the way stucco does; it fails at predictable weak points: seams, fasteners, and corners. Most drywall cracking comes from house movement or the original installation, not from paint. We classify by how and where it's failing:

Surface hairline / paint-line crazing

Fine surface lines, no tape showing. We scuff-sand, spot-prime, and paint — the coating covers these. We do not chase hairline crazing with patching compound, because that creates a halo of patched texture that flashes under paint. Knowing when to leave it alone is part of the craft.

Tape-line cracks / seam separation

A crack following a straight drywall seam, sometimes with tape lifting. We cut out the loose tape, re-tape the joint, bed the tape in compound and feather it flush in multiple passes, then sand, prime, and paint. Honest note: tape-line cracks can recur with house movement. Our repair restores the appearance now; it is not a guarantee the house will never move again.

Fastener pops and corner-bead damage

Nail or screw heads pushing through, or dented corner bead. We re-set or re-secure the fastener (or the bead section), fill, sand, prime, and paint.

Water-stained, soft, or structurally cracked drywall

Brown staining, soft or spongy board, sagging, or cracks with displacement. We stop and flag it. Soft or stained drywall means an active or past water source that has to be found first. Painting over it hides a problem and guarantees a callback — so we tell you about it instead of burying it.

Wood & Fascia — Sound or Failing

Wood is different again. The question isn't crack width — it's whether the wood is still sound or has begun to fail. As our warranty puts it, a bell can't be unrung: once wood starts to go, it tends to keep going, no matter the coating. We make sound wood look good and last; we don't warrant failing wood back to health. The test is simple — we press a probe into the suspect area. Sound wood resists; failing wood gives way.

Sound wood with surface checking or weathering

Shallow grain checks, weathered gray surface, but the wood is firm. We sand to a sound surface, spot-prime bare wood, caulk gaps, and coat. Surface checking is normal on sound wood and the coating handles it.

Peeling or failing paint on sound wood

Paint peeling or blistering, but the wood underneath is firm. This is our work to fix and it is covered. We scrape to a sound edge, feather-sand the transition, prime the bare wood, and coat.

Open joints, splits, or separated trim on sound wood

The wood is still firm, but boards have separated or fasteners backed out. We re-secure boards, re-set or replace fasteners, fill splits and nail holes, caulk open joints, then prime and paint — appropriate only when the wood itself is still sound.

Rotted, punky, or moisture-failing wood

The probe sinks in; the wood is soft, damp, crumbling, or splitting through. We stop. We don't paint over failing wood. Coating it hides the failure and guarantees a callback. We give you two honest paths: replace the wood as a separate line item and we coat the new material under full warranty, or you decline replacement and we document and exclude that area. Either way, you decide with the facts.

Fascia cleats. Where fascia boards meet, the joint is built to carry a metal cleat along the bottom edge — a small strip that shields the board's most exposed grain. Our standard: where a joint calls for a cleat and none is there, we add one. Where a cleat is there but loose, we re-secure it — or replace it with a new one. And every cleat, existing or new, is treated as the metal it is: spot-primed with the correct primer and coated with the fascia. The piece that protects the wood gets the same protection as the wood.

Stem Walls — Scraped, Repaired, Then Waterproofed

The stem wall — the short masonry band where your home meets the ground — lives a harder life than the wall above it: sprinkler splash, soil contact, water finding the base of the wall. So it gets its own sequence on every job. After the pressure wash, the stem wall is scraped to remove loose and failing material. Minor cosmetic repairs are made with a repair material appropriate to masonry. Then, before any paint, every stem wall is coated with DRYLOK® EXTREME masonry waterproofer — all of it, on every job, not just the spots that look thirsty — so the coating above starts on a sealed, water-resistant base. The full primer map, DRYLOK® included, is in the Surface Preparation Standard.

Making the Repair Disappear

A repair that isn't textured to match telegraphs through the finish coats — you'd see every patch when the low sun rakes across the wall. So any stucco or drywall repair beyond a hairline gets textured to match the surrounding wall before priming:

Note — once repairs are textured, they are primed and painted as part of our full prep process. See The Surface Preparation Standard for how we wash, prime, and coat every surface.

• Smooth / Santa Barbara finishes — troweled and sponged flush, feathered wide, no visible edge. The hardest to hide, so we take the time.
• Sand / float finishes — knocked down to match the aggregate with a float or sponge matched to the existing grit.
• Lace / knockdown finishes — a matching pattern sprayed on, left to flash, then knocked down to the surrounding profile.

The bottom line: When you hire us, every crack on your home is measured against this standard before any work begins — you'll know what we found and what we're doing about it. When we say a crack needs flagging instead of filling, that is us protecting you from a callback, not finding a reason to charge more. We'd rather have that conversation at the start than hide it under a coat of paint.

We stand behind our work and the products we use.