Drywall bulge/crease on load bearing walls

drywallload-bearing

I have a main roof beam running the length of the house. I have an exposed ceiling in the living and kitchen area so this main beam is clearly visible in those locations (highlighted in green). A few months ago, I noticed a bulge/crease in the drywall on both sides (highlighted in red). One is above the front door and the other above the main hallway entrance to bedrooms.

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Here's a closeup of both sides. It's hard to show in the pictures but the one on the main hallway is much more pronounced vs the front door.

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To be honest, I'm not sure when this happened but is likely not new. Also, it hasn't gotten any worse since first noticing (a few months ago).

However, I wanted to check with all the smart folks on this forum. Am I overreacting or is something I should be worried about and start proactively addressing? Thanks in advance for your help!

Best Answer

This has little to nothing to do with the walls being "load bearing"... most walls in houses are load bearing.

I can't say for 100% but I will reach out and say at 99% that your walls have no issues bearing the weight of the building.

Why are you getting the seams?

Easy. With no attic above and a general lack of insulation the wood is going to expand and contract.

Why are you noticing this?

  • Either there was severely hot, cold, or odd weather pattern. In my area of the midwest this is at its absolute worst when we get our 20 straight days of 95F+ and no rain. I have had this happen on properties that have been fine for 15 years and boom... there. Once it is there and you don't fix it right it will probably pop back yearly almost on a calendar schedule.
  • Or... you just bought this house, the previous owner made it look as good as they could, and boom you hit that time of the year that this happens. Obviously they could have done certain things to maybe help this... but they didn't and it is just cosmetic.

What can you do to keep this from happening?

  • make sure temperature and humidity levels are kept pretty constant (very very hard to do in an open system like yours)
  • move your house to a climate that has little fluctuations in temperature :). This is why open ceilings are common on islands or near coasts.

How do I fix these seams?

  • first of all I hate that they ended a piece of drywall above an opening and door. These are the areas that have the most fluctuations because they allow movement to condense. So aside from restructuring the drywall in the room...
  • You need to chisel out about a 3/8-1/2" gap on both of these - right down the middle. Fill the gaps with caulk - probably 1/2-2/3 deep. Yep that is a lot of caulk. Let caulk dry. Mud and tape and smooth to match. I spent years trying many methods to "permanently" fix cracks/bumps like this. This is the best I could come up with and works 70-80% pretty permanently. The only thing that you could add to make this better is using a more flexible plaster. They also make elastic paint that performs better (although I think most are outdoor and will off-gas for 2-3 months unless I haven't seen the new green ones). And another tip... if you use mesh and it fails you will notice it more. If you tape with paper and it fails you should just get a small hairline crack that you can hit with a paint brush to fill.
  • The hard or almost impossible part will be matching the texture. So you need to think very carefully about "fixing" this bump because you might notice the texture mismatch more than the bump.
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