What has been delivered inside Lake County is a full exterior on a two-story home of 3,593 square feet: body, fascia, soffit, window surrounds and columns, the pool lanai and rear porch ceilings, the rear elevations, and the garage doors carried in the body color so the front reads as one piece. One week on site.
It went deep green, and a dark color over stucco is the hardest thing to make look right. The reason is arithmetic rather than taste: dark paint shows every defect the wall has, because there is no light value left to hide behind. A patch that was never textured to match, a hairline filled and not primed, a crack painted over instead of opened — all of it reads from the street on a dark field where it would have disappeared on a pale one.
So the substrate came first. Tired trim and fascia were repaired or replaced before any coating went near them, because a coating over failed wood hides the failure while it keeps spreading. Cracks and spalled stucco were opened out, filled and textured back to match the wall around them. Failed sealant at windows, doors and joints was cut out and renewed rather than painted over. And the repairs themselves were primed, which is the step that gets skipped and the one that shows: an unprimed repair reads through the topcoat as a different sheen even when the color matches exactly.
The house stands on stamped concrete, paver decking and natural stone veneer, none of which can take a drop. The veneer was protected rather than painted — painting veneer is a decision that cannot be reversed later — and paper was run out over the hardscape elevation by elevation as the work came up. The trim lines between the dark body and the white were run by hand: tape gives a straight line, a steady hand gives a clean one, and at two stories that difference is what somebody sees from the curb.
On the practical side, Lake runs permitting for unincorporated property out of the Office of Building Services in Tavares, while Clermont, Leesburg, Eustis, Mount Dora, Groveland, Minneola and Tavares itself issue their own. Which one applies is worth settling before a start date is promised — it does not change the work, only the calendar.
Lake borders Orange County to the west, and it is one of the five counties we cover without a travel charge.