drywall tape

Yep. You're right!

TO LATE, and yes this will just become more obvious. Good thing its your neighbour and not "your Friend", "YOU"

That was stupid! Guess he could tape the cracks and feather in some mud then texture the walls. Or just tear it down and start over.

RV

Yep. As long as the walls are not yet painted, you still have another shot at it. Wet sand, or dry, the mud around the cracks until they are more exposed. Then start over and apply the tape and remud, feathering out on each side.

Any timber in the house will expand and contract with the seasons - so after one year, the cracks will probably be a lot worse.

Maybe your neighbour is prepared to live with this and learn from his mistake.

It's best to tape things up, but cracks can be filled with paintable caulking, too. You have prime first, so the caulk has something to stick to, then caulk, smooth the best you can before it dries, and paint.

If it's not done cracking, it might have to be done again in other places. Either way, he's probably learned his lesson.

Uh, yeah, that is ridiculous. Then again, so is sanding. It needs to be totally gouged out and redone.

Yep. Pretty weird that someone would just omit the tape entirely. If he's "done" with his spackling, and he thought he was ready to paint, then he's got another think coming. Tape is mandatory - the question is how to best approach it.

Four options:

2). Apply tape directly on the "completed" work and do the whole thing over with three coats of compound. No need to sand. If the joint tape is bedded in compound, it will adhere just fine to the existing spackle. I've never seen spackle delaminate between coats yet, so it'll definitely stick as well as any other coat will. The tape and spackle on top of the existing spackling will have some buildup and would throw off corner squareness and affect moldings. Might be a big deal, might not.

That's called a kludge, by some.

You can make a proper taped joint, or expect it to open up at some time.

They're never "done cracking" with annual house "biorythm" of internal relative humidity. If you go to Washington's mansion at Mt. Vernon, you'll see ~.75" gaps between floor boards in winter, which go to zero in summer. Same applies to framing, of course.

I've seen a few attempts to caulk such shoddy joints- wanna guess what happened to them in every case?

I'm sorry you've seen it done wrong, but done correctly, I've seen it fill a crack both indoors and outdoors without problems for years. Of course outdoors, it wasn't drywall. In both cases, priming before caulking is imperative to allow proper adhesion.

BTW, if you think the hairline cracks in the drywall seams will fluctuate between zero and .75", you're smoking something.

RIGHT !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Your neighbor didn't do that...... YOU DID IT !!!! Come on, fess up ......

You have 2 solutions to remedy this problem.

1. Tear down the house and start over.
2. Tear down the house and buy one already finished.

Mitty

It's almost comforting to see some things never change. I haven't looked at this group for awhile, but there is the same ratio of idiots to the truly knowledgeable . What a shame when m*********on loses it's charm for morons like this Mitty .Let's all hope this guy get's a girlfreind and stays off this group for awile. It's really not that big a deal. In the amount of time it takes to listen to CarTalk and have a few beers the taping wil be fixed. Thanks to all the good guys that offered real advice.