Finally realized why my drywall patches kept cracking after 3 years

I had this spot in my hallway near the bathroom door that I must've patched 4 times over 3 years. Every 6 months a hairline crack would show up. Thought it was bad mud work or my tape technique. Last month my brother in law came over, looked at it for 5 seconds and asked if I was cutting the paper tape short. I was. Been cutting it flush with the patch edge instead of overlapping it 2 inches past. Fixed it with one proper patch and now I feel like an idiot for all the sanding and repainting. Anyone else have a simple fix that took way too long to figure out?

2 comments

2 Comments

emma_hart17d ago

Oh come on @mark_nguyen95, is it really that deep? I've been cutting tape flush for years and my patches only crack if I look at them wrong.

mark_nguyen9517d ago

Wait, you were cutting the tape exactly to the edge too? Dude I did the exact same thing for like two years on these ceiling patches in my living room. Kept getting these little crescent cracks near the corners and I blamed it on the house settling or bad compound. Then my neighbor who actually does this for a living watched me do one and was like "where's your overlap?" I felt so dumb. Now I leave like 3 inches of paper tape sticking out past the patch on all sides and embed it into the fresh mud. No cracks since. Its wild how such a tiny thing makes the difference between a repair that lasts and one that fails every 6 months.