advice / repairing wall cracks

Hi! I live on the top floor of a pre-war townhouse in Bushwick and we’ve had a couple cracks appear in our walls, as well as one small one on the ceiling. I know there’s a good chance these are all just the house settling (we’ve done some renovation work over the past two years) and would be fine to patch and plaster over, but we’ll be renting our floor out in the fall and I would really like to get a professional in to check it out, just in case.

Would love a referral, or even just clarity as to who I should be looking for – a general contractor? A handyman? An engineer?

Thank you!!

wesleyas

in General Discussion 2 days ago

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Brownstone Home Inspection | 1 day ago

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what cate is saying is correct. it is relatively simple. in 2006 when we bought our house, i taped all of the cracks and made plaster repairs. new cracks appeared over the 18 years and last fall i brought someone in to do this work. Really a very good painter should be able to tape and plaster. it is a trade in itself but on the maintenance side, good painters can do it. just ask them as you call.

when i did the work in my own house, i did not use plaster weld and did not have issues. i did a restoration decades ago in manhattan and used plaster weld. not sure how that faired as the unit has passed out of the owner’s hands.

for anyone with maintenance questions or questions about old houses, i provide maintenance inspections. these are long home inspections where people follow me around as i prepare a report and they can ask me questions. a lot of stuff is easy to do. i am a home inspector now because a customer and her husband had bought a flip and were having issues with the repairs and getting the right people to do them and i walked around and helped them by coaching them. then one day i found a leak on their roof that the roofer could not find and she said “you need to become a home inspector”. two weeks later i was in home inspector school. She has provided a review of me on this forum and i have posted it on the testimonials page of my website. partly because of that experience with her, i now provide roof inspections and coach people in repairs and maintenance so they are not held hostage by shoddy roofers.

steve
brownstonehomeinspection.com

cate | 2 days ago

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If the cracks are merely cosmetic, a skilled and experienced painter can get rid of them without any need to skim coat the whole room. They dig out the loose bits, apply PlasterWeld and mesh to the crack, skim over it and feather out the compound, sand gently with a wet sponge (I think), do it again, paint. The key is the mesh — otherwise the crack returns.

cate | 2 days ago

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What is the renovation work you have been doing? Are the wall cracks large and diagonal and over areas that are sinking? Have you had any leaks in the ceiling area? Has anyone been walking in the crawl space above the ceiling or otherwise disturbing the area above it? Has anyone been doing jumping jacks on the top floor, jumping off the bed, or otherwise stressing the structure?

If the cracks are not structural, and you don’t have reasons to be suspicious of the structure, you may not need to do anything. But if you do want to check the structural stability of the house, you need a building engineer experienced with old row houses as well as other building structures. They can visually inspect some aspects, and if they see anything concerning, they may need to remove surfaces to look at the beams.

A plasterer (or even you) can visually inspect for non-flat areas and bulges and also press gently on the ceiling plaster to see if it’s well connected or coming loose. A plasterer can pin the ceiling and skim coat (you will need to empty the room where the work is done).

BobMarvin | 2 days ago

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You need a plasterer who can do skim coating.