Full Frame Replacement and Flashing

The Version That Rebuilds the Opening

Full frame means the stucco is cut back around the window, the old frame and its nailing fin come out, the weather resistive barrier behind is repaired and relapped, flashing is installed in the correct sequence, and only then does the new window go in. The stucco is relathed, patched and textured to match.

It is the more expensive answer and it is the only one that fixes an opening rather than covering it. If your window has already been replaced once and still gets wet, this is why.

The Sequence, Which Is the Whole Job

Flashing is not a material, it is an order of operations. Water runs down. Every layer therefore has to lap over the layer below it, so a drop travelling down the wall is always handed outward.

The sill pan goes in first. It is a sloped tray across the rough sill with dams turned up at both ends and at the back, and its front edge laps out over the barrier below the opening. Anything that ever gets past the window lands in the pan and runs out onto the face of the wall.

Jamb flashing goes on next, lapping down over the pan, never tucked behind it. Then the head flashing goes over the jambs and tucks up under the barrier above the opening, so the paper sheds onto the flashing rather than behind it.

Reverse any one of those three and you have not made a weaker assembly, you have made an actively worse one. A head flash lapped the wrong way collects water and delivers it directly into the top plate of the opening.

Why Older Riverside Houses Need It

Sill pans were not standard practice around here until roughly the mid nineteen nineties. On a Wood Streets bungalow or a Victoria Avenue house, and on a great many of the tract homes along the 91 and 60 corridors, the sill under your window is bare framing with paper over it and nothing to catch a drop.

For decades that survives, because it rarely rains and the wall dries between events. What ends it is a run of wind driven storms after the sealant joints have been cycled open by four or five hot summers. Then the sill takes water repeatedly with nowhere to send it, and slab on grade construction means the framing sits low and stays damp.

What We Find When We Open One

Soft bottom plate at the corners is the usual one, and it is often confined to a few inches, which is why we would rather open an opening than argue about it. Rot in a king stud is less common but it happens where a leak went unnoticed behind a cabinet run.

Paper laps that go the wrong way are extremely common, and they were often built that way originally rather than by a later repair. So is a previous retrofit installed over a wet opening, which we can usually date by the sealant.

We photograph what we find and show you before we close anything up. If the framing needs replacing we tell you then, with the wall open, rather than adding it to an invoice later.

The Stucco Patch

A full frame job is judged on the patch, because that is the part you look at every day. New lath is tied into the existing, the coats go on in sequence and are given real cure time, and the texture is matched to the surrounding wall before any colour is applied.

Colour matching stucco is honest work and it is not perfect. A patch on an older, sun faded elevation will read slightly different at first and will settle closer over a year. We say that up front. A crew that promises an invisible patch on a thirty year old west wall is telling you what you want to hear.

Call (951) 632-2842.