What are these cracks in my walls?

Happy-Days_3

becciboop wrote: »

Hi, yes some cracks are where the curved ceiling meets the wall. It is only in one bedroom - not in our bedroom that we sleep in.

We have those polystyrene tiles in the cieiling of our bedroom though, and only in that bedroom, the rest of the rooms are wallpapered ceilings..Do you think its worth taking those tiles off and checking the ceiling in our room? We sleep right under those tiles!

Problem is, the tiles may or may not come off easily. Chances are it will need at best some filling and at worst take off parts of the plaster and result in it needing to be re-plastered.

It would have to be in a really bad way to collapse, so if you only have one room with cracks and there are not that many, it really doesn't sound like it is anywhere near that. We had 2 rooms where the curved parts were basically falling off the wall and the ceilings had large cracks and were heavily bowed.

You can get a good idea of the state of the plaster by pressing or knocking it. Difficult to explain, but decent ceiling, we could put our hand on and push fairly firmly and it was just solid. On the other hand, when we did that on the damaged ceilings, you could feel the movement, by a good cm or 2 and you could tell it just wasn't right. It was a bit easier for me to find this as I had decent rooms and crap rooms to compare, so could see the difference.

If it were me, I would wait until you are going to decorate that room, be it 6 months or 6 years. Personally, I would then strip off the tiles and wall paper and then get a plasterer to come in and board over the ceiling and skim the ceiling and walls above your picture rails. Depending on where you are, will cost a couple hundred quid, but in doing so, the tiles will be gone, ceiling will be solid and all cracks will be gone and have a nice new ceiling.