Clearwater is really two exposure zones sharing one name. Out past the Memorial Causeway — Island Estates, Sand Key, the beach itself — homes live in direct salt spray and open Gulf wind. Inland, from downtown up through Countryside and the neighborhoods off U.S. 19 and Gulf-to-Bay Boulevard, the salt fades but the sun and summer storm load never do. We build exteriors for both, and the right answer changes noticeably in just a few miles.
The Housing Stock We Work On
Pinellas County built out early by Florida standards, and Clearwater shows it. Huge swaths of the city are 1950s-through-1970s concrete block ranches — terrazzo floors inside, low-slope roofs, jalousie or single-pane aluminum windows, and stucco that has been painted a dozen times. Countryside and the newer northern sections add 1980s frame-and-block two-stories with wood trim that Florida humidity has been chewing on for four decades. These are fundamentally good houses; block construction from that era is famously solid. But their weak points are all on the outside: original windows that leak air and offer zero storm protection, fascia and soffit rot, hairline stucco cracking, and roofs their insurers no longer want to cover.
