Cracking Up: My Home's Drywall Needs Some Work

My latest home-repair project, er, debacle involves patching some cracks in my drywall.

Precariously balanced on a hill, my old house is suffering from some serious settling. It's not sufficiently severe to crack the foundation, but it is doing a number on my interior walls.

I've been looking at some of these fissures for three years or more. Finally, I thought, enough is enough.

I'm not tackling all of them. I would, but I don't have the motivation to paint all of the main-level walls and all that that entails: moving furniture and so forth.

So I settled for repairing the cracks on two walls. When finished -- should that day ever come -- I will paint these walls and the one connecting them a contrasting color to what the rooms are now painted. I have that color all picked out; that was the easy part.

I am at least somewhat capable of doing a passable patching job. The secret to repairing cracks in drywall is using several uber-thin coats of mud and sanding each thoroughly. With each coat, use a wider knife, and things should turn out all right.

My problem is that every time I think I'm ready to paint, I find another crack I hadn't noticed. I'm beginning to believe that I will never be done.

Find a new crack, drag out all the drywall-finishing paraphernalia, then mud and sand for another three days.

I'm tired of the mess and cleaning up after every application of mud is a real pain in the...well, it's just not much fun.

In fact, I was going to skip blogging today, but decided that the longer I sit at my keyboard, the longer I can put of working on this damn drywall project.

So much for that strategy....