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wrote:
Does anyone have any advice/experience on this:
I have some walls in my house that have small, thin cracks forming that
I can't seem to clean up. There are a couple in the bathroom, 1 in the
living room, & some in the bedroom. None are on seams or corners, just
randomly down straight lines in the middle of the wall. It appears to
be just the house settling. (about 50 years old)
I tried using joint compound to clothes them up & it was totally
obvious and still looked terrible. Plus after a few months the crack
formed again right through the center of the compound. Also tried
filling a real thin one with paint to try & clean it up & that
re-formed just as quickly.
Is there a correct way to patch these and get them looking better,
short of cutting open the wall & hanging new sheet rock???
Thanks for any advice in advance!

A 50 year old house shouldn't be doing much settling. A 50 year old
house may have plaster or drywall walls. If they're drywall and the
cracks are vertical and you're positive that they're not in the usual
seam locations, it would definitely point to a structural issue. You
also didn't mention whether the cracks are on interior or exterior
walls or both. If it's just exterior walls, you might have termites
and/or rot.

There are products such as Crack Kote that work well for covering up
cracks without the bump in the wall that regular joint tape and
compound would create. Just make sure that you're ignoring a more
serious structural problem and focusing on the cosmetics.

R