A center for disadvantaged children received a fresh, welcoming new look recently thanks to an exterior restoration project using NeverFade® Façade Restoration Coatings with Kynar Aquatec® from APV Engineered Coatings.

Jewish Adoption and Foster Care Options (JAFCO) provides homes, foster care, adoption and support services to abused, neglected and at-risk children in South Florida. When the nonprofit expanded its mission to support families raising children with developmental disabilities, it built an innovative and unique Children’s Ability Center in 2014. The bright and airy, two-story, 43,000-square-foot facility features a sweeping canopy and a façade of striking colors to create a vibrant and welcoming appearance.

Sunshine State Weathering Issues

Keeping building facades in pristine condition can be difficult and expensive because most coatings rapidly degrade in the brutal humidity, high temperatures, salt air and harsh sunlight. Designs incorporating deep, brighter-hued shades, such as the red, orange, yellow and blue colors on the Children’s Ability Center, are especially prone to severe fading.

After only five years of exposure in the intense weather, the Children’s Ability Center showed signs of wear and tear. The colorful stucco façade - originally painted with an acrylic-based coating - significantly faded, chalked and deteriorated. With the harsh weather taking its toll on the building’s aesthetics, JAFCO turned to coating contractor Restore Construction Group for a restoration solution that would stand the test of time.

Desired Long-Lasting Protection

When selecting a restoration coating for the stucco façade, the building owner’s primary goals were longevity, accurate color matching, and steadfastness of the bold color pallet. To meet these needs, the Restore Construction Group recommended upgrading from a premium acrylic latex paint to a more-durable and longer-lasting fluoropolymer topcoat finish made with a PVDF emulsion and complex inorganic pigments, for extreme weatherability and color retention.

The chosen coating system (NeverFade^® Façade Restoration Coatings with Kynar Aquatec^®) resists dirt, staining, microbiological growth and corrosion, and it is excellent at preventing water from penetrating the surface, since PVDF is naturally hydrophobic. APV backs the product with a 15-year product-and-labor warranty against color fading.

“Due to the inconvenience and expense of repainting the building every five years, the building owner was convinced that this high-performance topcoat was the best solution for meeting their project goals,” said Norge Arnaiz, Principal of the Restore Construction Group. “Additionally, the very limited 10-year warrantee that came with the originally specified acrylic paint did not cover color fading, and the product manufacturer could not precisely match the specified colors.”

Restoration Gets Underway

APV Engineered Coatings custom-color matches NeverFade^® topcoats to each customer’s specification. Primers are custom-tinted as well. For JAFCO, the company matched JAFCO’s trademark deep red, orange, yellow and blue custom color scheme. The project team then produced drawdown cards and mockups on the structure to conduct performance tests and confirmed that the finishes and colors met the high expectations of the client.

The restoration started with repairing the concrete substrate and replacing most of the PVC reveals that break the stucco into sections. The surface was then cleaned with pressure washers and coated with APV’s W-1500 primer. After the surface preparation work and primer installation was completed, the crews applied two coats of the topcoat finish using rollers and brushes per the specified film thickness.

Metal sunshades were scraped and sanded to bare metal with a wire wheel and wiped with solvent before being primed with APV’s 2K Epoxy Corrosion-Resistant Primer. Following the primer, a coat of NeverFade^® Metal Restoration Topcoat was applied to specified thickness.

“The high-performance topcoat had a creamy, rich texture with excellent workability and flowability,” said Arnaiz. “The coating evenly covered the building’s stucco profile and kept a nice wet edge with no roller marks, which is a challenge in the hot, humid Florida climate.” 

Colorful Aesthetic to Stand the Test of Time

The Children’s Ability Center now has a fresh and brighter new look, and the JAFCO management team is very pleased with the restored exterior and the coating's high resistance to the harsh South Florida weather, allowing for a lengthened lifespan of the colorful stucco façade.

“Our intent was to be budget conscious while providing a long-lasting, beautiful aesthetic,” said Michael Moran, Facilities Director at JAFCO. “The high-performance coating will not only retain its vibrant colorful appeal for a very long time but also provide significant cost savings by not having to repaint the facility every five years, which is a typical coating lifecycle in Florida.”