opinions on modern stucco?

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. Starting in about the '80s developers were using a lot of stucco

of a type that didn't breathe, and homeowners ended up with serious black mold problems. I know one person who had to gut his whole huge, expensive house down to the studs because the non-porous stucco caused moisture to condense in the walls and cover the insides of the walls with toxic mold that made their kid very sick. This was never a problem with the old type of stucco that was popular way back in the '20s and '30s. So be sure you know that the stucco you use won't make the walls so airtight that mold can form. I don't care for stucco much; if you want to paint it, it requires an enormous amount of paint.