wrote:

Hi, my house is a five-year old newbuild, and has a 'cloakroom'
underneath the stairs. Recently I have noticed that gaps have been
appearing between the skirting on the stairs and the rest of the wall -
a few mm at the moment, but enough to worry me.

When you say skirting, do you actually mean the "string" of the stairs
(i.e. the wooden side piece of the staircase each of the treads and
risers are rebated into)?

Occasionally I've also heard a cracking noise whilst I have been in the
sitting room which might be caused by this (it could also be the metal
door exterior cooling down, but I am getting paranoid at times - my
missus is pregnant, etc)

Is this all normal? Is there danger of this getting worse ? Should I
get someone in under NHBC (which I note doesn't cover us for work under
£500)

A certain amount of movement with stairs is inevitable to an extent. You
may also experiance a small amount of shrinkage of the wood over time.
How much will depend on the wood used to make them. Quite often stairs
these days will have softwood strings, with ply or MDF treads and risers.

One would hope the string is well fixed to the wall. It used to be
common to rebate the string into the plaster a little to hide any
movement of the string - but this is not so common now. Any curl in the
string could also show as the edges pulling away from the wall.

--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/