Walls and Ceilings - Ceiling Crack on New Sheetrock

Help! We are adding an addition to an old (100 years) home. The addition is all new. We had the framing done, but we are sheetrocking ourselves, with some experience. In the family room we used 16 foot pieces of sheetrock for the ceiling. The are screwed to joists - we started screwing at one end of piece of sheet rock and proceeded to the end. The seams have been taped and have three layers of mud - - look very good - except for very thin cracks in the middle of parts of the seam. Unfortunately, you can press on the ceiling and see the sheetrock move up and down slightly - however it is between the joists where there is nothing to nail it to. We dug out the mud and retaped. Now have new cracks. Any suggestions?

Hello. I have a problem similar to yours. Installed new sheetrock. Found a hairline crack along a seam, A few days later, found another. We have re-sheetrocked half of our house and shutter at the thought of putting all of the seams again.

What did you find to fix your situation? Did you have any success?

Thanks in advance.

Welcome to the forums ptm215 and schuckb

Help! except for very thin cracks in the middle of parts of the seam.


Is this the section between the ceiling joists/rafters? What's the spacing? what thickness drywall did you use?

Looks like the drywall you used isn't thick enough for the span of the ceiling joists.

Also which way did you hang it. Across the joist or with them. And what kind of mud did you use to tape and coat??

Normally you would use 5/8 drywall on ceilings. It sounds like you may have used 1/2".

Hi. Thanks for the replies.

We hung 1/2 inch sheetrock. My problem is on the walls. We hung the 4x8 sheets of sheetrock horizontally. The cracks are horizontally, running between the studs along the long sides of the sheetrock.

We used mesh tape. I hear that paper tape may have been been a better choice, but can't mesh tape be used also?

We used a drying-type, pre-mixed joint compound for all three coats.

Thanks again.

(note: ptm215 originally posted about 2 years ago)

The mesh is the problem. Paper tape is the only way to go. Should use All purpose to bed the tape and lightweight for your coating. The fix is to cut out as much of the crack as you can, tape it with paper and re coat your joints.

And Tradittion User, 1/2" is fine on ceilings as long as you have 16" on center.

Sorry for implying 5/8 is all that can be used, it's just a question of better and best. Another thing to consider is how tight your drywall joints are. With bigger gaps they should be pre filled before applying tape.

Paper tape is preferred. It is important that if one uses mesh tape to use a setting joint compound to embed the tape. I like to use it on the second coat as well.

It is somewhat counter intuitive that paper is better. Here's how to demonstrate it.
Take a short piece of each tape maybe 4 inches long. Grasp it by diagonal corners and pull. The paper stays together. The mesh deforms. This is the direction of most stresses in a wall. so paper is stronger in the direction that counts.