LESLIE: Sandy in Iowa is on the line and she has got a problem with wall cracks where the stairs meet the wall. What’s going on there?
SANDY: In my stairwell, where the sheetrock meets the floor joist, when they originally did that, they put that – you know how they use that heavy paper stuff and then they mud over that? Well, that cracked. And I peeled that off and now I’m trying to figure out how to smooth that over there between the sheetrock and the floor joist in the basement. Because it’s sheetrock to wood, I don’t know what material to use to fill that crack so that I can paint over and it look smooth.
TOM: So, what you want to do – it sounds like you pulled the old tape off – the paper tape off. Is that correct?
SANDY: I did.
TOM: Well, that’s OK. Because what you want to do now is you want to go out and buy some fiberglass tape for these wall cracks.
Now, fiberglass drywall tape is perforated. It’s kind of like netting; it’s a little tacky. And you cut a piece off, you put it on top of that seam. And what that’s going to do is bridge the gap across the seam. And then you cover the tape with spackle.
And you want to do about three very, very thin coats for such wall cracks. Don’t put too much on. A little bit of spackle goes a long way. Sand in between in each one and then just build it out and build it up over those three coats. And that’ll be fine. And because you put the tape over – the fiberglass tape – it shouldn’t crack again.
SANDY: That sounds like something I can do.
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