How to Repair Stress Cracks in Walls and Ceilings

hi everyone it's lee of cj drill now mari she's a viewer and she wrote in that she has a crack in the living room wall and it's up to a sixteenth of an inch in some areas and it runs from the ceiling to the floor she says that the building superintendent told her that it's well it's just a building settling and she wants to know what she can do well i'm gonna tell you mari how to fix that crack but i gotta tell you your super is right it's called a stress crack and it comes from the building settling pointing to a stress crack on a ceiling and what i'll tell you is they can be kind of challenging to fix because they have a tendency to come back again and again if they're not repaired the right way and that's what today's video is going to be about i'm going to show you how to repair a stress crack so that it never comes back again i just got my cabinet sample doors from cabinets.com and i gotta tell you i wasn't certain about the color so i requested two doors now the door on the right is espresso and the door on the left is smoky charcoal i took advantage of their fully refundable sample door program and the returns are free i ultimately decided against the smoky charcoal and went with the espresso because it best suited my vision for the kitchen so what we have here is drywall and this crack is a result of the tape failing because this section has shifted there's a lot of stress on this joint okay if you have plaster the way you go about it is just a little different and that is you have to take a five and one tool like this this is a painter's tool with a point on it see that point there and you take that point and you put it in the crack and you create what's called a v channel and you drag that tool along that crack and open it up but that's only if you have plaster so we're going to be using something called crack tape on that stress crack because that's what it is but i got to tell you this material is great for stress cracks it's good on plaster drywall and for truss uplift and if you've got truss uplift you know what i'm talking about in terms of needing something that's really gonna hold now the thing about this is it's not like paper and it isn't like mesh tape this you couldn't pull it apart if you tried now what i like about the material other than it's a composite material that's very durable and strong i like the fact that it has these little holes those holes help lock the tape in to the plaster now when i apply this you'll see exactly what i'm talking about so we're using all-purpose joint compound that's what this is that's the consistency that you want if it's too stiff mix just a little water in it to get a consistency that looks like this now we're going to start off with our bedding coat here and we're going to apply a generous amount of joint compound over the crack and we want it thick enough so that we can really embed the tape into the joint compound so we're going to take our crack tape and we're going to uh apply it to that crack there we go well the reason why i'm wearing gloves is because you got to really put your hand into it all right and if you notice can you see remember i talked about how the holes lock in the joint count pound or plaster okay so now i'm going to just lay down that tape okay and what i will tell you is it's going to take more than one coat this is just the first coat we're just laying that tape down and making certain that it's fully embedded in the bedding coat and it is but it's going to take a second and possibly a third coat okay so i've asked the camera person to come in very tight very close so you can see what's going on here now with this particular product you embed your tape in the bedding coat and then you go over it right away with a very light coat that's what we're going to do right now just a light coat now i don't want you to worry if it's not a perfect job that's not what we're looking for with this light coat okay we're gonna let this set up get hard and once it's completely dry we're going to put a finish coat on and then we're going to sand it smooth now let's apply our finished coat i got to tell you the tape is pretty much hidden but let's take out some of the imperfections here let's taper it out a little bit more so we really hide the fact that this has been taped lay that down a little bit better there we go now i'm going to come back in the other direction so this is our job it's finished and i want to tell you with the right materials you can take care of these stress cracks this is leah saying you can do this see you next time

Channel: seejanedrill

Views: 988,763

Rating: 4.8206477 out of 5

Keywords: cracks in wall, cracks in ceiling, crack in wall, crack in ceiling, how to fix crack in wall, how to fix crack in ceiling, repair crack in wall, repair crack in ceiling, stress cracks, what are stress cracks, cracks caused by house settling, wall repair, drywall repair, plaster repair, cracks in plaster wall, cracks in drywall, wall repair for beginners, drywall for beginners, drywall repair tutorial, causes of cracks in wall, causes of crack in ceiling

Id: yV5oI_CuJio

Length: 6min 6sec (366 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 22 2018