House Hairline Cracks

Firstly have these appeared since you moved in?

Apols if already answered

Also you have house buildings insurance as a condition of the mortgage.

So no problem, if you want get it checked out, then claim on insurance, but I wouldn't worry unless it goes through to the outside, and it doesn't look like it follows the brick line.
 
That first one above doesn't look like just a hairline crack to me. The general standard of plastering looks rather shonky too. I would get someone in to look at the worst ones. I'd draw a line at the end of the worst ones to see if they get any worse too. If you get the all clear on subsidence then i'd have all the ceilings re-plastered properly by a professional, repair the hairline ones in walls, generally sand everything flat and then a combo of plain coloured paper and feature walls.
 
I am not sure if I just missed it or not as I was looking mainly at ceiling when I first moved in....

Yeah the plastering looks a bit bad and I'm sure the previous owners (who owned the house for 1 year) had just covered and painted the cracks and they are reappearing..... as there are other areas which look like they have covered cracks and is the same colour paint....

There are definitely no cracks on the outside which is the only thing which makes me feel its not subsidence....
 
spluff said:
I stuck a sewing needle into the bottom of the crack behind radiator and it went in about 1cm.
Click to expand...

That seems good, there would be a gap behind the plasterboard anyway.

My concern would be if you don't sort the cracks and plastering so it's properly smooth it would affect your ability to sell it later. It probably has a few layers of poor decorating attempts over everything. I can't imagine the plastering would have been that bad to begin with. What might have happened is the taped joints may have been poorly implemented to begin with and if they failed, e.g. creased / wrinkled, came unstuck etc, a DIYer may have removed some of the problematic taped joints and then filled them instead.

The fine cracks around the skirting boards / architraves are probably a result of cheap calk drying out and cracking. That can be fixed with a sharp chisel and scrape it all off, fill any damage to the walls with a spatula and some crack / shrink resistant ready mixed filler from a decent brand like Polyfiller. Refill any gap between skirting / architraves with a cartridge of Flexible Polyfiller using a cartridge sealant gun but also use a fugi tool to scrape off the excess Flexible Polyfiller so you end up with a neat bead and straight line around the top of the skirting / edges of architrave to paint / wallpaper to.
 
thenewoc said:
That seems good, there would be a gap behind the plasterboard anyway.

My concern would be if you don't sort the cracks and plastering so it's properly smooth it would affect your ability to sell it later. It probably has a few layers of poor decorating attempts over everything. I can't imagine the plastering would have been that bad to begin with. What might have happened is the taped joints may have been poorly implemented to begin with and if they failed, e.g. creased / wrinkled, came unstuck etc, a DIYer may have removed some of the problematic taped joints and then filled them instead.

The fine cracks around the skirting boards / architraves are probably a result of cheap calk drying out and cracking. That can be fixed with a sharp chisel and scrape it all off, fill any damage to the walls with a spatula and some crack / shrink resistant ready mixed filler from a decent brand like Polyfiller. Refill any gap between skirting / architraves with a cartridge of Flexible Polyfiller using a cartridge sealant gun but also use a fugi tool to scrape off the excess Flexible Polyfiller so you end up with a neat bead and straight line around the top of the skirting / edges of architrave to paint / wallpaper to.
Click to expand...

Thanks I will add this to my list of jobs and stop worrying :)
 
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