I'm by no means a handy person and honestly have no clue what's going on with my home. The house is 55 years old, built by my grandfather, who was a semi-functional alcoholic. If you saw the house you would understand the relevence... There is about 3 feet of crawl space underneath, but no way am I going under there ( I have some friends who would though). My grandmother always called the house a bungalow but it's more like a box. There is one story and 5 rooms, 2 of which (living room and 1 bedroom) have no obvious problems. The main door leads into the kitchen/dining room area and as soon as you step in there's sagging floor. The area between the floor and the door base is separating and you can see the ground. [ATTACH]76447[/ATTACH] To the right is the kitchen area where you can feel the boards under the laminate. Some higher than they should be, some lower, and some spots where it feels like nothing is there at all. The sink base has been in the house since it was built and is completely rotted out underneath - you can see the ground in many spots. [ATTACH]76448[/ATTACH] The bathroom is the worst as it seems to be separating from the rest of the house. The doorway has a huge gap where you can see the ground and the floors and walls are separating. I'm crediting this damage 100% to my grandmother who, bless her soul, wasn't a neat freak (putting it mildly) and left standing water for days at a time (mainly from toilet backups). [ATTACH]76449[/ATTACH] I'm also pretty sure there's no traditional subfloor iin the bathroom, just a few slats of rotted plywood (or is that the subfloor?) [ATTACH]76450[/ATTACH] Aside from the entry the rest of the dining area seems solid, no sags. I'm pretty sure some joists need replacing but I'm not sure if it needs to be done throughout the entire house or just in the rooms with issues. The one positive (I think) on my side is the rooms are all fairly small. bathroom - 7 x 5 dining room 8.5 x 12 kitchen 8.5 x 9 I've been reading up on DIY repairs but it all seems like Greek to me so I'm hoping someone can lay out, in lamen terms, what I need to do and the cheapest ways to do it (I'm on a tight budget after paying 13K in back taxes just to keep it in the family).

Hello, couldn't decide which forum to use, hope this is the right one. Somewhat of a drywall question I guess... I have had a wall that cracks, and would like some input. Background: Factory built trusses, house is about 10 years old. I have lived here a couple years. This guy built both my house and neighbors house nearly identical. He was not really a great builder, and it shows in places. Used bare minimum of everything including drywall thickness. Both these houses have the same crack. The living room has a vaulted ceiling with scissor trusses. Small insulated attic above the living room trusses, not a cathedral. The rest of the house has a conventional truss. Insulation is about R30. Going to blow in more cellulose when I get this crack figured out. The drywall was repaired by professionals hired by the previous homeowners, by the homeowners themselves, and the neighbors also have tried multiple things to fix the crack (drywall, not structure). Neighbors say this crack has happened basically since new, they purchased while house was under construction or shortly thereafter. The crack is seasonal. This time of year, Michigan, below freezing temps, the crack is probably nearly 1/4" wide. In summer, no crack at all. The drywall is cracked both horizontal at bottom truss chord, and vertical where truss is trying to compress drywall toward roof. Crack is much worse horizontal. It has even popped a couple drywall screws further down toward the floor and cracked in the corner of kitchen ceiling near this crack in the wall. See pictures of crack below. I think one of two things is happening. Either the truss has "truss uplift" and they didn't account for it somehow, OR the way they tied the truss to the other structure is making it twist/distort somehow. The only thing I see that I question is they cross braced the [U]top[/U] of scissor truss where the crack is happening to the [U]bottom[/U] chord of the next over conventional truss, probably for shear. In the picture, the brace is just one stud bay down the center hallway. I would think that it should have been top chord to top chord, or at least something different as the brace is very short and it goes at a 45-ish degree angle to the next truss over. I wonder if this is racking the truss in question enough to crack the drywall? No other apparent structural issues. Nice solid poured concrete foundation (nice dry basement) and no other places in house where there are cracks. No apparent moisture or roof issues either. All interior and exterior doors and windows open and close fine, so I don't think it is settling issue. We aren't in seismic zone or anything like that. No sagging roof or unlevel floors. Too temp related, and two houses doing same thing so must be either design issue, or something guy did when building. Thoughts? Anyone seen anything like this? Fixes?