Drywall and ceiling repair in San Mateo

Settlement cracks on San Mateo's filled baylands

The City's Safety Element says ground settlement typically happens on filled baylands in the eastern part of San Mateo, and that fill reaches as far west as El Camino Real. Settlement cracks buildings and foundations, and indoors it tends to show up as diagonal cracks running off door and window corners. In the 9.5% of homes built in 1939 or earlier, the wall is often plaster over wood lath instead of drywall.

Send a photo of the crack with a bit of the room around it, and tell us whether it has grown. A crack that keeps reopening points to movement, and we will say so before patching it. Loose material gets cut out, the joint is taped and feathered wide, the texture is matched and the patch is primed. Sound plaster gets patched in place.

Worth knowing about San Mateo

• 19th Avenue Park is an Eichler tract built from 1953 to 1955. The City describes Eichlers as post-and-beam houses, often with a central atrium or courtyard and clerestory windows.
• About 70.4% of the city's 42,641 housing units were built before 1980 and 9.5% in 1939 or earlier. The 1950s are the largest single building decade, at 21.3%.
• Hillsdale, started in 1939 and resumed in the late 1940s, has one-story Minimal Traditional and Post-War Minimal houses. Shoreview built 1,200 homes in 1949 alone.