Not all old houses list and bow.

I would suggest getting a structural engineer who is familiar with old construction to look at your house. It is much easier for someone who sees the house to figure out what the problem is than for us to suggest the cause and remedy over the intenet.

Yes, of course getting someone out to look at the house is the best course of action. I just figured there was a possibility that someone in this forum could perhaps shed a bit of light on what may be happening. Thanks.

If you've been living there just about a year, that is about how long it takes for plaster repairs to start failing if the underlying problem was never addressed. The only thing I am suggesting is that this may not be a new problem. You might want to check around the new fissures to see if you find any evidence of dry wall joint tape where somebody threw a patch on it, then mudded it over to pretty up the walls before selling.

I wouldn't automatically suspect rotting studs as much as movement in the foundation blocks. That could be caused by so many things, water seepage, of course, is one but I do know that in many areas of the country homes are built on clay soils and they expand and contract from moisture content in the soil. I hope you find somebody really experienced in that sort of work to assist you. But there are any one of a number of causes. (Been there and done that and on my fifth old house).

Any chance the house was retrofitted for earthquakes? I think it's called seismic retrofitting? They have to go under the house to do it. We had it done on our small, wooden 1924 bungalow. We have a shallow block foundation too. And plaster walls (but we have a crawl space, not a basement). The floor of the living room leans slightly too. (when we used to have bottled water delivered by the Sparklett's truck, I'd roll the bottles into the house and they would keep rolling across the living room floor!).

We had a structural engineer evaluate the house when the plumber who was working under the house asked if we knew we had cracks in the foundation wall. What cracks?!!

Thanks Calliope - my suspicion is very much in line with what you point out here. I do see dry wall joint tape in some of these areas and am certain that the house was "well-dressed" before we bought it. I also think that much of the potential movement in the structure is likely due to expanding and contracting clay soil. We (in Chicago) have extreme weather (hot summers and cold winters) and I'm sure over time this can cause an a structure to continually settle or move to some degree.

I guess the question at hand remains...does this sort of issue suggest that I may be spending a lot of money here soon to correct some foundation problems? Or is this something easily lived with and tolerated?

Did I just answer my own question? In any case, Thanks!

My nearly two hundred year old home.....I am laughing........is so out of plumb there isn't a straight wall or rectangular door or window in the joint. The foundation, however is pristine. It is nothing but huge stone slabs, and doesn't even appear to have any type of mortar or cement to it. Prolly why it's been able to tolerate the expansion and contraction. I live in clay country. I am not afraid of this old house, and just plan to touch up plaster as an on going project and do one room a year as and if needed. I would really want a foundation assessed however if it were block before any problems got too far out of hand. The proper time would have been proactively, before purchase. Foundations scare me because I cannot see "minor" repairs where they are concerned. The big problem is getting somebody in who does not stand to profit from your problem.....if you know what I mean. It's very hard to take somebody's word about the severity of a problem if they can make more money based on how bad you need help. That's what some of these other threads have been about. Two contractors with totally different stories and estimates. Who can you believe?

My ex.......a civil engineer........used to do home inspections. He stood to gain nothing if something was minor or major. The fee was modest and he knew what he was doing. I even asked him to come with me when I was considering a property for investment a few years ago. I'd rather hear the estimate then than later. LOL. Good luck.

I agree completely - the time would have been proactively, before the purchase. Problem was, the cinder-block foundation was (freshly) plastered and painted and looked really nice. But our inspector was unable to inspect much of anything. You couldn't even tell it was a block foundation - except for a few small areas where they didn't plaster. Over the first few months of living here we began to notice moisture issues within the wall. Plaster and paint bubbling and so forth. So now I have chipped and scraped away about a third of that plaster revealing an attempt to spread concrete over much of the block before plastering and painting. So bottom line - we still can't examine the foundation. What I do know and see is some of the "trouble spots" where moisture is passing (or trying to pass) through the block. No standing water or anything like that - but after a good rain you can feel the moisture in the cement by touching it. Not a good sign we think... :(

Are your gutters and drain system in good shape? What about the soil around the house, Does it slope away from the foundation? The first key to keeping moisture from coming through the foundation is to look at the things which keep the moisture away from the outside walls.

Gutters are new - replaced last year. And the grade along the perimeter of the house is ok - could be better. Another thought concerns the proximity of our neighbor's homes. The houses are very close together (maybe 10-12 feet on each side) and both neighbors on either side have water run-off issues caused mainly by clogged gutters. The neighbor to the north of us has a lake along the side of his foundation even after a moderate rain. So the ground must get awfully saturated between the houses - considering the lack of spacing between houses. So there's that to contend with as well...

Oh man, do I ever feel for you. On my house in town in which my daughter and her husband live, I had the same problem. I had one damp wall in the basement.......no damage yet, but my daughter tracked it down to the complete lack of gutters on the house sitting above her on the hill. Same types of clearances between houses, about ten to fifteen feet. This is a huge old slate-roofed two-story dumping a gazillion square feet of runoff down to our level. It even washed out the ground under one of my sidewalks in front. There are legal things you can do about that and I sure dreaded going that direction and thankfully when I purchased, they must have anticipated I'd say something and finally put up gutters. The basement was dry from there on out times three years, until just a couple months ago when again, one damp patch of wall on that side of the house. Daugther told me one of the downspouts had let go on the house above hers on the hill. You probably have nailed it. If the people around you don't repair their issues, you can't even get a baseline on whether you have issues. Are they on speaking terms?

Yeah, those neighbors are super friendly. An older couple from Alaska. Great people. The guy even cleaned my gutters this fall on his side of the house as he "was up there anyway cleaning his own." For whatever reason, a lot of water still accumulates between the houses - though more so on his side - and that is the wall where much of the moisture is found. Only apparent fix as far as the block is concerned would be to dig up along the outer foundation wall and either try and seal or re-pour another outer wall of some sort. Sounds very time consuming and/or expensive! For now, I just keep an eye on it.

A french drain could also be an answer if it is really needed. Even one between houses with a shared cost, if he has the same problem in his house.