Cracks in Plaster Round Door Frame

Hi all,
I'm new to this forum and I'm looking for a little advise on a problem door frame. I'm a DIY novice so I apologise in advance if my question seems trivial. The plaster round my back kitchen door frame started to crack a couple of years after my house was built. It was a straight vertical crack about 60cm from the door frame. I then decided to try and fix this so I started off by removing all the loose plaster and found that the vertical crack coincided with the edge of a plastic strip (see photo below). Anyway, I decided to stick some plaster board onto the plastic strip using an adhesive called "No Nails" and plaster over it. It held for a while, then the crack reappeared again. So I removed the plaster board again and looked more closely at the plastic strip, which I could see moving slightly when I closed the door hard. Now there's obviously a little movement in the door frame, however its so little that I don't think I could make it more ridged. I thought possibly that I could fix the problem by screwing the plastic strip to the wall to stop it moving. But as I found out today, there's just a cavity filled with insulating material behind the plastic strip so I've nothing to screw into. Can anyone advise me how to make this plastic strip ridged so that I can plaster on top of it without any cracks reappearing? Any advise would be very much appreciated, thanks.

 

J,

Weclome, but have to tell you ya can't post pics directly here......the PowersThatBe won't turn on the features that allow that, so you have to post them somewhere else and post a URL to where they are in order for us to see them...

I don't have any idea what the plastic strip is, but it does sound like the source of your problem.......

We don't do a lot of plaster walls over here, at least in my area, so I'm not personally familiar with plaster procedures.

You might alls post down in walls and ceilings forum......

 

Thanks for the reply, here's a link to the picture I mentioned:
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/shaun.f.../DoorFrame.jpg

 

JtB --

You figured out the photo thing -- good job!

The "best" solution might be to install a veneer over that section of wall. I have no idea why it would crack like that! The veneer could be done with white melimine, or something that you could paint white to match the existing, or it could be done with something that you could stain to match the cabinetry. (Your choice there.)

Sorry about not being able to post photos directly in this website. We USED to be able to do it -- then some turkey decided he needed to abuse it by posting some stuff that had NOTHING to do with what we are about. Ruined it for everybody!! So, we jsut post a link to some website where the photos can be shown. A pain in the butt, but it works!