We have spoke with our builder and of course he has says this is normal....He recommend that we give it another couple of months..."to let the house settle more" and then he will send his crew out to repair. We had a new house once before and never experienced any cracking in drywall and trim as we are now....just a bit concerned.

Pam

The bottom is normal.We have these appear in our moulding every winter when the humidity is low. The top crack looks questionable to me.
Let the builder repair them.

I don't know if this is the case for you, but our drywall guy said if it is humid and cold and the mud does not have time to dry completely, it will eventually crack at the joints. He had to wait a few days to finish to make sure it was completely dry. Was it humid and cold when they drywalled?

The moulding crack is normal for sure, I dare say there will never be a time you have some of these as the lumber will shrink/expand with climate changes, but it could have been installed before it acclimated to the house making it a little worse, but looks normal. The horizontal drywall crack looks questionable to me, but would be worth it to wait it out a little longer to see if it gets worse or more appear.

Our house has had no visible signs of settling in the 1.5 years we have lived in it, but settling is normal. From what I've heard this settling is not really the foundation settling but just the lumber in the house itself shrinking and such.

If the framing didn't get a chance to dry out for a couple of months before drywalling and trim, there'll be a lot of shrinkage that can pull apart seams and trim.

The baseboard is pretty much normal, especially if they didn't nail and glue the corners together before installing it. The wall crack though is a lot larger than I'd expect. Certainly, annoying to look at in a new home! I tell buyers to wait at least a year before patching any normal shrinkage cracks or screwpops.

Thanks all for the info and peace of mind. We had three huge rain storms during framing before we were roofed. We swept out inches and inches of rain over a 4 week period. I questioned the builder at the time if this would be a concern later on. Of course I got the "it will dry out" line. Now that were running heat and two fireplaces all the cracks make sense. It seems everyday I'm looking for new or expanding cracks. I read that it usually takes about a year for a house to "dry" out...unless you're living in the desert I guess....

Thanks all for the posts.
Pam

yea, thats the point I left out of my first post by accident. Because we owner built our house dried for about a year before we drywalled.

The seperation in the baseboard moulding is normal.

The crack in the drywall looks worse than it is. Remember, drywall is not structural, you can bust it up with a hammer if you want to and your roof will not fall in on you. That being said, most homebuilder's warrantys do state that they will come out at the end of the first year to repair drywall seams and cracks, nail pops, and such. The crack in your picture is just cosmetic, but is so noticable that I would send the pic to your builder and ask if they would send someone out to fix that one now. Just ask them to fix that one because it's the worst one. (Did you save some touch-up paint?) And remind them that you still want them to come back for the one-year touch-up too. Make a punch-list of anywhere that your find settlement cracks or nail pops.

Again, it's nothing to worry about, it's just cosmetic.

Unless that crack in the molding is filled with a flexible material (like white caulk), it'll come back.

Even after the builders repaired cracks in our molding using regular caulk, the next winter the cracks showed up again. The caulk cracked with it.

I bought some Great Stretch caulk and it has worked well.
It expands and contracts with the movement of the wood.
It also stays flexible. Since I have used it on the cracks, they have not reappeared.

Big Stretch?

Yes, Big stretch. I had just used Great Stuff to seal a hole and had the word great on my mind.