ceilingdrywall
My house is 5 years old and is a two story. This is on a ceiling upstairs in a vaulted area of my home. We have an attic but don’t use it for storage or anything. I can tell it’s the drywall but would this possibly be something related to structural or something I can easily fix? I am still under a 10 year structural warranty with the builder, so if it’s that, I want to have them fix it. Thanks.
I want to add on to ben's answer. You will always have sag with a 14 foot header. If it is a metal i-beam maybe 1/100th of an inch... Your wood/LVL will sag much more.
What you are describing is ultra typical when there is a point load above and they used LVL. I don't know why cities keep allowing the use of LVL for anything more than 10 feet. It will look great and then year 2-3 it starts sagging... year 4-5 you get cracks and notice it... It is not unsafe because the LVLs will have to be seriously sagging before anything would happen. 5/8" is just enough to disturb the finish and annoy you. You can either install a beam in the middle of the room or put in a better header.
I can tell you I bought quite a few houses with sagging rooms for a huge discount. It is really an easy fix. You support each side of the room with a temp frame job, cut out LVL, and install metal i-beam. This is a one day job if you have a couple helpers. The main thing is to jack the metal beam slightly higher than level and support that level during install.
Just a caulk might not fix your problem....Crack might appear next winter. You should use tape specially designed for dry wall joints it looks like this:
After that you can paint the wall. Of course, you use this tape with caulk like products, specially for this purpose (knauf-fugenfuller etc.)
Best Answer
I don't believe it to be a structural issue but a bad tape joint as @Tester101 mentioned in his comment. There's a slight possibility that this is a byproduct of a small roof leak too, tho not likely in a 5 year old home. Also, as @Tester101 mentioned, it's difficult to say without being able to physically inspect the structure ourselves.
Bubbles in taped joints are caused by not having enough mud behind the joint tape. If I were to fix this, I'd cut out most of that seam and redo it.