More cracked walls

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Q. I read your column about cracked walls and was wondering why I see the same problem in several areas of my home. I’ve ignored the cracks after all these years because I’ve tried to fix them and they just come right back. I realize they’re not getting wider; they just reappear if I fix them. Why do you think they can’t be fixed?

A. Think of your house as if it were on a slow-motion roller coaster, moving back and forth, up and down, jerking (very slowly) side to side. Interestingly, the most damage occurs when we get a serious freeze. Materials and methods are the problems. I often thought, growing up, about what my grandparents witnessed in their lives: using horse and buggy, seeing their first automobile, two world wars, and the changes in their living environment, from a tenement apartment to their first house in the suburbs. Then I think about growing up and seeing construction techniques change.

I wandered onto a construction site down the street at age 3. My older brothers were supposed to be watching me, and they sort of were. My middle brother fell through a floor opening and broke his leg, a memory still as vivid as the smell of fresh-cut wood and drying plaster. Plaster, rolling on smoothly with a broad knife, still brings back such memories for me — the smile of a plasterer looking over at me as he smoothed the white globs over metal mesh-covered walls.

By the time I got to architecture school, 40 years ago, the buzz was about new techniques, one of which was wallboard to replace plaster. Plaster was over as the wall finish of choice, but, as it turns out, it’s much more resistant to cracking, with its flexible, movement-absorbing mesh backing, and naturally resistant to mold. The problem is that plaster is more labor-intensive, and since labor is the most expensive part of the job, wallboard took over, being cheaper because it’s faster to install.

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