I am renovating my son’s bedroom and trying to make the walls as nice as is reasonable before repainting. There are a few cracks like this in the paint. It looks like on top of the drywall there is paint, wallpaper, and then a few more layers of paint. The cracks could be at the seams of the drywall from expansion and contraction. They could be at the seams of the wallpaper. They could be something else. Most of the cracks come straightish down below the sides of windows, which makes me think drywall seams.
I gouged out one crack and filled it with joint compound to see how that works. Since the drywall is old, it was really hard to tell if this is at a drywall seam or not - there are places where previous work, maybe mouse damage, and who knows what else has made the drywall crumble from behind. These are the joys of an older house!
How would you handle this?
Fellow “old house” owner here. I’ve got very similar cracks and similarly old drywall. Sanding it down and filling with joint compound was my plan. How did that work out?
Saving this post to see what kind of advice you get so I can try too.
Joint compound can’t span cracks without just cracking again; it needs to be stabilized with something. Usually that’s the embedded tape, but it could also be fiber-reinforced compound or something like that too I suppose.