Same crack every time, top corner of a bedroom doorway, running up at about 45 degrees for maybe 20cm. I have filled it twice with lightweight filler, sanded and painted, and it comes back within about four months both times. House is 1970s, no doors sticking, no cracks anywhere else. Do I keep chasing it or is it telling me something?
Note when it reopens. Always late autumn or always in a dry spell is humidity moving timber, and that is benign. Reopening at random or widening each time is a different conversation.
Mine reappears every February without fail. I stopped filling it and now I just repaint that corner when I redecorate.
Mark the ends with a pencil tick and write the date next to it. In six months you will actually know whether it grew instead of arguing with your memory.
Twenty centimetres above a door in a 1970s house is not a structural emergency. Repair it properly once, then stop looking at it.
@cast_iron_carl · 4mo ago · 3 replies
Cracks at the corner of an opening are the most normal cracks in a house. That corner is a stress concentration - the wall above the door carries load and the material either side does not, so seasonal movement shows up there first. Twenty centimetres, 45 degrees, one location, nothing else going on is textbook.
It keeps coming back because rigid filler cannot handle a joint that moves. What works:
The mesh gives the movement somewhere to go. Mine has held five years on a crack that used to reopen every winter.
What would change my answer: the crack widening past a few millimetres, the door starting to bind, or new cracks appearing on the same wall.
Reply
Report
@knobandtube_nan · 4mo ago
Mesh tape rather than a better filler. I have been buying the wrong solution twice a year.
Reply
Report
@cast_iron_carl · 4mo ago
Filler is for holes, tape is for movement. Almost every repeat crack is somebody using filler where the wall wanted tape.
Reply
Report