Fine cracks in plaster

Our internal walls and ceilings developed rather a lot of fine cracks over the last year due to the dry conditions and probable shrinkage & general movement of the building. We are in the process of decorating the room which had the most cracks - mainly down one wall (virtually from floor to ceiling). My husband attempted filling the cracks with flexible filler a couple of weeks ago, sanded down then painted a coat of white paint over the top. The cracks have reappeared. We will soon be at the stage where the room will be painted it's final colour, but cannot get on with this until the cracks are sorted out. Are we using the best thing to fill fine cracks or is there a better solution? Any advice would be appreciated. Jo

I find fine cracks very hard to do anything with unless you make them a bit bigger! No idea if you're supposed to do this or not, but worked for me. Just run over the crack a few times with a screwdriver / Stanley knife to make it around 2-5mm wide - clean it out and then fill the bigger crack. You can use flexible filler if you want, but you'll be struggling to get the filled gap perfectly smooth to the wall, and you can't really sand flexible filler AFAIK. Personally I'd use some sort of smooth finish fine-gap filler, filled slightly proud of the wall and sand it down before painting.

In fact, just checked for you - Screwfix do Fine Surface Filler for £1.79 a pot - part no: D17738 - you *might* get away without having to make the cracks bigger with this stuff - try it first.

Obviously I take no responsibility for you destroying all your walls. :-)

Andy