Fixings Ceiling Cracks - Home Repair Advice
It's not uncommon to find cracks in your plaster or
drywall ceilings. It's not uncommon to find cracks in your wood ceilings
either, but this article is about plaster or drywall ceilings that have
small or large cracks in them and what actually causes the cracks and
how you can repair them.
Believe it or not, most cracks in your ceilings and in your walls, on
any drywall or plaster home interiors, are going to be the direct result
of structural movement within the house. This could be from a small
earthquake, the framing components are starting to shrink, as the lumber
starts to dry it out or it could even be from your house settling.
Larger cracks might signify problems with your foundation or even your
soil.
If you have a large crack in your ceiling, and this would be something
that you could stick a quarter into, you could have a structural problem
and I would recommend contacting a home repair contractor in your area
to evaluate your situation.
You realize that you have cracks in your ceilings and they're not very
big, how do you repair them. The easiest way would be to apply a
paintable caulking into the cracks and repaint the area. This could save
you some frustration in the future, especially if the crack starts to
become larger.
The best way to fix the crack, would be to apply some fiberglass drywall
tape and then apply a standard drywall joint compound to finish the
ceiling correctly. If your ceiling has acoustic or wall texture, you
will need to reapply to finish over these areas to match your existing
ceiling correctly.
If you have hairline cracks, I wouldn't even worry about them, unless
they become larger. However, you could always apply a little bit of
caulking and repaint them.
I would like to remind you something that I already said before in this
article, if the cracks are larger than the width of a quarter, you might
want to contact a building professional. You could have some serious
structural damage occurring in your foundation or framing.