Hi,

I moved into a house with an extended room that has been very badly built and I am trying to fix the problems before turning it into a nursery. The main issue I have at the moment is with small cracks in a wall.

This wall is made up of an external cavity wall joined to an internal hollow stud wall (entire wall is small at 2300mm x 2200mm). It looks like they just built the extension wall and then plastered over the lot. Not long after that the wall began to crack slightly where the stud wall surface has "lifted" off slightly (I can press it down but haven't ripped it back to look underneath). It's only a minor crack but a pain since it can't be patched up easily and painted over.

I presume the walls should never have been plastered over like this? A friend suggested putting two plasterboards over the entire wall to cover it up properly and that I could use the direct bond method and paint over it once the join has been taped and skimmed. Is this the best method? The wall is flat and painted and I’d rather not lose too much space in an already small room. If dot & dab is a OK, I presume I could make the dabs fairly thin so there isn't much of a gap between wall and new plasterboard, maybe a couple of mm once tapped down?

Alternatively, would it be a better job to fix the join in the walls a different way and then get someone to plaster over the wall? I haven't been able to find any info on joining a hollow stud wall to a (presumably) breezeblock internal wall on the internet.

Thanks for any help!

probably best just to get a couple of local plasterers to come have a look, impossible to say without a trained eye on the job really but from what I'm reading, its a studwall running into a masonary wall and thats done all the time....
It just seems like youre wasnt done very well so it may be best to just have the plasterboards off and investigate, refix any studwork, sort any likely problems, scrim the joints and reskim it..

dabbing more plasterboards over a problem surface isnt a good idea imo...
thats just 'papering over the cracks' on a large scale..

sort the problem... then decide... just my opinion...

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http://www.peterborough-plasterer.co.uk/

Makes sense as the work is seriously shoddy! Thanks.