Exterior Painting & Critter Damage Repair in McKinney, TX — Cascades

A two-story home in McKinney’s Cascades neighborhood came to Phillips Home Improvements with a combination of problems that don’t always show up together: years of North Texas weather wear on the stucco and eaves, and a more urgent discovery waiting at the roofline. Second-story critter damage along the back and left elevations had compromised the original wood frieze boards, fascia, and soffits — animal entry points that needed to be permanently closed before any paint could go on. The team replaced every affected section with James Hardie® fiber-cement components, resealed eleven windows set in brick and five set in siding, applied full-strength Benjamin Moore Aura paint across the eaves and stucco, and finished the columns, corbels, and garage doors with a solid color stain to tie the whole exterior together.

Before and After – Exterior Painting & Critter Damage Repair in McKinney

Project at a Glance

• Location: McKinney, TX
• Neighborhood: Cascades
• Property Type: Two-Story Single-Family Residence
• Project Scope: Complete exterior painting of eaves and stucco walls, advanced fiber-cement carpentry repairs to replace critter-damaged frieze boards, fascia, and vented soffits, thorough multi-elevation window caulking and masking, downspout repainting, chimney cap prime and paint, and solid color staining on columns, corbels, and garage doors

The Challenge: Weather Wear and an Animal Intrusion Problem at the Roofline

From the street, this Cascades home looked like a straightforward exterior repaint — faded stucco, aging eaves, the kind of surface wear that builds up quietly over years of North Texas sun and seasonal storms. What the homeowner knew was that the paint needed attention. What wasn’t visible from the ground was a more specific problem waiting at the second-story roofline.

Critters had found their way into the wood frieze boards, fascia, and soffits along the back and left elevations, chewing through material that was already softening from weather exposure. Left unaddressed, those entry points don’t close themselves — they get wider, and the structural damage underneath compounds every season. The painting project that started as a surface refresh became something more deliberate once the roofline was properly inspected.

The Discovery: Critter Damage Across Two Elevations and Failing Seals at Sixteen Windows

The full picture came into focus during the initial inspection and surface preparation. Along the back and left elevations, the team found that pests had worked through multiple sections of the original wood frieze boards, fascia, and soffits — damage that wasn’t obvious from below but was significant enough that patching wasn’t a realistic option. The affected sections needed to come out entirely and be replaced with something animals couldn’t chew through.

The window inspection added more to the scope. Eleven windows set in brick and five set in siding had sealant that was failing or missing entirely across multiple elevations — sixteen windows worth of gaps that were letting air and moisture behind the surface. Catching all of this during prep, before any paint went on, was what allowed the team to address the actual condition of the home rather than just its appearance.

The Solution: Fiber-Cement at the Roofline, Full Reseal at Every Window

Every compromised wood section at the roofline came out and was replaced with James Hardie® fiber-cement — frieze boards, fascia, a vented soffit panel, and trim components across the affected elevations. Fiber-cement doesn’t give animals the same purchase that wood does, and it won’t soften from moisture exposure the way the original material had, so the replacement addresses both the immediate damage and the conditions that allowed it.

All sixteen windows were systematically resealed using a combination of DAP Dynaflex® lifetime caulk, Allpro Quick 2 Coat acrylic caulk, ProStretch premium elastomeric sealant, and Sherwin-Williams® PowerHouse siliconized acrylic latex — different sealants matched to the specific material at each window junction. With the structure repaired and sealed, Benjamin Moore Aura® exterior paint went on at full strength across the eaves and stucco in a custom color matched to the existing home palette. The front columns, six structural corbels, and the garage doors received a Behr® solid color house and fence stain in Powerhouse Beige (WL1102A) to bring the full exterior together as one cohesive finish.

The Results: A Roofline That Animals Can’t Get Back Into

The most meaningful outcome on this project isn’t the fresh paint — it’s the roofline. The entry points that had been letting animals in are gone, replaced with fiber-cement that won’t give them the same foothold. The sixteen window seals that had been failing are now continuous and properly matched to their surrounding materials. And the full-strength Benjamin Moore Aura finish on the eaves and stucco gives the home a weather barrier that will hold up through North Texas summers without chalking or fading prematurely.

The stained columns, corbels, and garage doors in Powerhouse Beige complete a palette that reads as intentional rather than patched — the kind of finish where the repair work underneath isn’t visible in the result. The project is backed by the Phillips 5-Year Workmanship Warranty, and the fiber-cement components carry their own manufacturer warranty against the rot and pest vulnerability that caused the original damage.

Materials Specification

Why Proper Preparation Matters

On a project where critter damage had compromised the roofline and sixteen windows had failing seals, preparation wasn’t a preliminary step — it was the core of the project. The TSP pressure wash stripped away accumulated dirt and chalky residue to give new coatings a clean surface to bond to. Scraping and sanding peeling areas before priming ensured the topcoat wasn’t going over anything unstable. And the systematic window resealing pass — using four different sealants matched to the specific material at each junction — created a continuous moisture barrier across the entire exterior rather than a collection of spot fixes. That level of preparation is what allows full-strength paint to actually perform the way it was engineered to.

Materials Selected for Long-Term Performance

The material choices on this project were directly shaped by what the inspection found. James Hardie® fiber-cement went in at the roofline specifically because animals can’t work through it the way they did the original wood — it closes the entry points permanently rather than temporarily. Benjamin Moore Aura® was selected for the painted surfaces because its formulation holds color and resists UV degradation through the kind of sustained heat North Texas delivers across a full summer. The Behr® solid stain on the columns, corbels, and garage doors in Powerhouse Beige brings the architectural details into the same palette as the painted surfaces, while providing its own weather-resistant finish on surfaces that see a lot of direct exposure.

The Phillips Approach

Animal instrusian at the second-story roofline is the kind of problem a faster job might have caulked over and painted past. This project treated it as a structural issue, not a cosmetic one — pulling the affected sections entirely and replacing them with fiber-cement that addresses both the animal damage and the underlying moisture vulnerability that had been weakening the wood. The sixteen-window reseal got the same thoroughness: four different sealants matched to four different material junctions, rather than one product applied uniformly regardless of what it was sealing against. Paint at full strength, no dilution, backed by a five-year workmanship warranty.

Questions Related to this Exterior Painting Project

Q: Why was it necessary to replace the original wood trim and soffits with fiber-cement rather than patching the damaged sections?

The critter damage along the back and left elevations had progressed to the point where patching wasn’t a real option — animals had worked through multiple sections of the frieze boards, fascia, and soffits, and the wood itself had also been softening from moisture exposure over time. Patching over compromised wood leaves the underlying vulnerability in place and gives pests the same material to work with again. Replacing the affected sections with James Hardie® fiber-cement closes the entry points with a material that animals can’t chew through and that won’t absorb moisture the way the original wood did. On this property, three frieze boards, a fascia board, a vented soffit panel, and trim components were replaced across the affected elevations — a scope that addressed the full extent of what the inspection found rather than the minimum visible damage.

Q: What specific steps were taken to protect the unpainted areas of the home during the painting process?

Before any paint was applied, the crew carried out an extensive masking pass across the property. Eleven windows set in brick and five windows set in siding were individually masked using Sterling masking paper and Shur Allpro masking tape — the same windows that had just been resealed, now protected from overspray during the painting phase. The brick elevations and surrounding property features were also protected throughout the process. This level of masking isn’t just about keeping paint off the wrong surfaces — it creates a defined boundary that lets the painting crew apply Benjamin Moore Aura® at full strength without pulling back near edges, which is where coverage tends to be inconsistent on less carefully prepared projects.

Q: How does applying architectural paint at full strength improve the durability of the home’s exterior?

Paint that gets diluted with water before application goes on thinner than the manufacturer designed it to, which reduces the film thickness that determines how well it resists UV exposure, moisture, and surface wear over time. On this project, four gallons of Benjamin Moore Aura® Satin and three gallons of Aura® Flat were applied at full, undiluted strength directly over the primed eaves and stucco surfaces. Aura’s weatherproofing and fade-resistance technology is engineered to perform at a specific film thickness — applying it at full strength is what allows those properties to actually work as intended. The result is a finish that holds its color and its protective function through North Texas summers rather than chalking or fading within a few seasons.