How to Repair Wall Cracks in Your Home
Cracks in the walls of your home are worrying at best and structurally significant at worst. This guide explains how to recognize a crack you can repair yourself versus one you can’t, as well as how to make that repair without causing further damage. Repairing cracks in your property’s walls is something most people can DIY. However, it’s important that you can recognize structural defaults to keep your home and family safe.
How to Treat Cracks Which Need Professional Repair?
Firstly, you should not attempt to repair all cracks in the building by yourself. In Boston, people are always tempted to do everything as a DIY project. But for the sake of safety, Boston people should hire a professional if the crack is either too big to fix with filler or too dangerous to reach alone. You should call an agency that does concrete wall crack repair in Boston, MA, to bring in the state-of-the-art tools which make even the hardest-to-reach, or worst structural crack, good as new. If the job is too big, too dangerous, or affects your home’s structure, leave it to the professionals.
Identifying Structural Cracks
Look first toward the shape of the crack. When builders erect a new house, the foundations and the brickwork will ‘settle.’ This process usually results in small hairline cracks in the walls and plaster about 12 months or so after the building is complete. These are normal. Similar small cracks occurring over the years are a further result of this settling. There are small cracks like this all over your home. If some of them become unsightly or crack your paintwork, you can certainly fill them in. We will discuss this more in a moment.
The cracks that may be structurally harmful are those which appear as if they are stairs running up the wall. Those which are particularly deep, hard to reach, or run across the room in jagged edges, are also the types of cracks to be wary of. Pay attention to deep cracks in the basement where the foundations of your home lie. These types of cracks require careful professional repair. You can learn more about identifying these cracks and their repair costs relating to your home insurance here.
How to Repair Small Cracks in Your Walls
If the crack is less than 25mm wide, you can consider it safe to repair yourself. Here are the steps to repairing a crack so that it doesn’t return in the coming months.
Step 1: Score the Area Around the Crack
Take a knife or a scraper and score the area around the crack. You don’t need to score it so that you make the crack worse; simply run your scraper along each side of the crack to catch any loose material that might weaken your repair.
Step 2: Apply the First Layer of Plaster
Apply a layer of filler to the affected area and smooth it out. It doesn’t have to be a thick layer. The purpose is to make the tape stick.
Step 3: Apply The Plasterer’s Tape To The Crack
Run the tape along the crack. The tape is a gauze-like tape that will hold the two edges together.
Step 4: The Second layer of Plaster
Apply a second Layer of filler over the tape and wait for it to dry.
Step 5: Sand it Down
Sand the repair until it is smooth, and you are free to paint over it in the color which matches your wall.
Crack Repair is Simple
Small crack repair is easy enough. Just leave the big cracks to the experts.
