Renovation or evacuation

[woodbutchmaster]

We live in an old stone built farmhouse in S W France, thought l would decorate the room we use as an office. Stripped off the old wallpaper and revealed this !
Fill it and forget it or move house ?

 

[briantrumpet]

We live in an old stone built farmhouse in S W France, thought l would decorate the room we use as an office. Stripped off the old wallpaper and revealed this !
Fill it and forget it or move house ?
View attachment 788536

View attachment 788536

If it's like my French stone house, the walls are about 3ft thick, and that's a century of settling. I see some houses with entire walls strapped on with iron bars to prevent them toppling over. I've got a few small cracks on the walls, but nothing that a bit of polyfilla and white emulsion won't hide until I'm too old to care. (My guess is that a French builder with experience of old houses wouldn't call it a crack unless you can get at least a finger or two well into it).

Back in Devon, I had a structural engineer come to look at my cob house, as there are some cracks, but he was happy that it was settling/compression rather than shearing - that's the one you have to look out for in cob.

tl;dr - cover it up and pretend you never saw it!!

 

[swee'pea99]

Bit a Polyfilla, cuppla coats, job's a good'un. Bish bash bosh. Nez par innit.

 

[king of the mole hills]

Bit of parrot food jobs a goodun

 

[woodbutchmaster]

Thats it then , pollyfilla it is ,

 

[Electric_Andy]

Is that plaster/render? I would cut a V in the cracks and see how far down they go. You'll have to fill it anyway so it's not like you're wrecking the finish. Hopefully just cracked plaster so you can fill and cover. If it's anything more serious, I doubt you'd want to cover it up and cross your fingers

 

[si_c]

It's old plaster - looks as though it's shrunk over time and with the settling of the house a few cracks have formed. As noted above you can fill it and it should be fine - but worth checking whether it's lime plaster or not, if it is then you're better using a lime filler rather than polyfilla.

 

[briantrumpet]

It's old plaster - looks as though it's shrunk over time and with the settling of the house a few cracks have formed. As noted above you can fill it and it should be fine - but worth checking whether it's lime plaster or not, if it is then you're better using a lime filler rather than polyfilla.

Yeah, I had the front of my house re-rendered in lime wotsit & then whitewashed, so the cob/stone can still breathe.

 

[Pat "5mph"]

@woodbutchmaster that's nothing: all houses or flats I've lived here in Glasgow, if you take wallpaper down the whole plaster coat comes down with it!
Right down to the bricks!

 

[king of the mole hills]

@woodbutchmaster that's nothing: all houses or flats I've lived here in Glasgow, if you take wallpaper down the whole plaster coat comes down with it!
Right down to the bricks!

Thats all the headbutting they have had over the years

 

[accountantpete]

Check if the plaster keys are still intact and if so a bit of polyfilla should do the job. If it is loose then drill a few holes around the area and fill with glue to re-attach.

 

[woodbutchmaster]

It's old plaster - looks as though it's shrunk over time and with the settling of the house a few cracks have formed. As noted above you can fill it and it should be fine - but worth checking whether it's lime plaster or not, if it is then you're better using a lime filler rather than polyfilla.

It's cement render over stone !

 

[si_c]

It's cement render over stone !

Easy enough then, just use a masonry repair to fill the crack. The easiest (but not cheapest) way is probably to use the type you get in a caulking gun - just squeeze it in to full depth.

 

[biggs682]

Knock all that history down and build something more modern

 

[Psamathe]

I can't say worry or don't worry but I do think it be easy to overreact.

When I lived in France much was Tuffeau stone which is very porous erodes easily so soon end-up with large holes from softer bits. Other bits flint/clay very thick and with a river running through the house so a lot of drying out, saturation through the year meaning a lot of stuff moves around.

When I purchased my house on Oxfordshire they survey report came back with "it doesn't have foundations" which the surveyor informally comment that it never had foundations and has been standing for hundreds of years.

Depending on construction, etc. if I stripped off old wallpaper and saw that I'd not be concerned. eg it was "old" walpaper yet showed no signs of having torn (or stretched?) so maybe been stable for years.