Two main reasons for basic movement at that joint are: 1) new construction settling and shrinkage. That usually occurs after the first year, and it's usually a "get it out of my system" thing. It happens once, then it's usually done. 2) I was going to ask if your house is built with trusses and if there was an attic above this bathroom. As your builder already explained to you, there's a phenomenon called "truss lift" where seasonally, the lower chord of the truss moves (flexes upwards and downwards) due to movement of the other parts of the truss. Usually, movement is highest at the mid-span of the truss chord. Truss lift will usually repeat itself seasonally. It is usually accommodated for in just the manner your contractor specified, a "slip joint" with crown molding. The crown is secured to the ceiling only, so when the ceiling moves, the crown "slides" against the wall. I've seen instances of 3/4" gaps between the partition wall drywall and the ceiling drywall during the lifting. I recall one case where the builder went and and tried to stop the truss lift by going in the attic and securing the truss chords to the partitions walls with Simpson clips. The next season, the truss lift was so strong it actually pulled one entire partition wall off the floor! The proper way is to allow for the movement. There are truss clips that connect the truss chord to the partition walls while still allowing vertical movement of the bottom chord of the truss. Also, when the ceiling is drywalled, the ceiling drywall is not screwed to the truss chords near the perimeter walls of the room. The drywall floats. Clips are then used to connect the edges of the ceiling's drywall to top edge of the wall's drywall. Then you mud and tape the corners. With that detail, when your truss lifts, the edges of the ceiling drywall don't move upwards with the truss. The edges stay connected to the wall drywall. As the chord lifts, the ceiling panels flex just a tad, and you get no cracking in the corners. Your movement is not significant. But that doesn't mean it doesn't hurt to look up and see the cracks and gaps. Truss lift is a hit or miss thing. Sometimes it happens throughout the house, sometimes it shows itself in one room more than another. In a subdivision, one house may have it another may not. Your contractor's "repair" is technically correct. But the "trim" he used may aesthetically be inadequate. Without other photos I have no idea how that added "trim" melds with the detailing in the remainder of your house, but that's your call. To my eye, the "trim" that was added is inadequate and undersized. Anyone (contractor or builder) building with trusses should be aware of the possibility of truss lift. The only way I know to minimize or eliminate it is to insulate the roof plane of the house instead of insulating the attic floor. That minimizes some of the seasonal environmental swings that the trusses are exposed to. Hope this info helps! Best, Mongo

you should really start a new thread as you'll get more input Donna. first understand that for mold to grow it needs two things, moisture & a food source. eliminate the moisture source, once you find out what it is. I'd start at the roof. open the ceiling, remediate..maybe as simple as letting things dry out once moisture is stopped, maybe materials need to be replaced. you won't know until you can see it. it takes time for mold to grow, it doesn't happen overnight, so maybe hoa will have to cover it if it predates your repair of roof. inside the home it can take 5 years...but in a garage? don't know. you'll want someone experienced in mold remediation to handle materials properly & safely as they are removed. and be able to prove it if necessary to hoa. that may be expensive. I do a some of mold remediation, respirators, sealing off room, double bagging materials etc. reason for doing the work is that too many people treat mold like a gold mine & scare homeowners with toxic mold stories. realistically, only 2 types are toxic, and every house has mold...somewhere. so try to steer clear of those folks. so, if you were to diy, fix leak, open ceiling. once you open a spot up...you can look to see how far the damage extends. cut out sheetrock to that point & look again, cut so that you can easily replace it with new sheet/piece. remove insulation, if any & look at 2x's to see if mold has grown on them. I use tsp (tri sodium phosphate or something like that) & scrub with a brush. let dry, rinse, scrub again. let it all dry for a few days. put a fan on it. check moisture level of wood & at 30% you can close it up again. tape & float sheetrock. sometimes I'll kiltz or bullseye/zinner the framing members when the area is opened. hope your hoa will do what is right here for you. best of luck

Some term definitions to start. The hole for the door is called a rough opening(RO). That hole is made by installing king studs(which span floor to ceiling) and jack studs(which span floor to the top of the rough opening) and are attached to the header(top of the opening). See the link I inserted. Those chips(called shim packs) are actually the shims used to install a door frame in a rough opening to the jack studs and header and are the usual procedure. Although there are not enough of them in the pictures(unless you have already removed some). On a door like that(with 3 hinges) there should be shims at each hinge and one pack approximately centered between the hinges(5 shim packs total). And similar placings on the latch side. There seems to be a bit more to this situation. What is the line on the right side of the wall? Is that where the old trim stopped? Is the line old caulk? If I were fixing that, I would remove the sheet rock at least as far as one stud to the right of the stud forming the rough opening(called a jack stud) and replace that sheet rock to make a smooth section of the wall. I'll bet the left side is the hinge side and was situated as such for the door to open against a wall on the left. That is pretty normal design.It is also fairly normal for the left side trim to be more narrow, since it is usually blocked by the open door. You will probably need to move the entire rough opening to get the 4" you want. An experienced carpenter/handy person can do that fairly easily. It is also a DIY project for someone willing to learn. There is nothing load bearing involved, so simply adding studs to the left side(actually nailing two to the existing left hand jack stud) and removing the jack and king studs on the right (and the header) to install a new jack/king stud and header for the new RO. That will, however mean removing the dry wall on both sides of the walls and replacing with new. That is a lot of work and expense to add 2" however.

Thanks for your response! I assume that our plans did (though I'm not sure) and our plans were certainly approved so I don't understand whats happening here at all. My contractor is equally perplexed and says he's never heard of this type of installation nor of this being required. The wall in question isn't a shared wall, the other side of it is the exterior of our unit. We also had a permit from the beginning. For some more color on why things have taken so long: a good 7-8 weeks passed with no work being done because our property management company and HOA kept asking for additional documentation in order to approve the addition of a skylight AFTER the HOA president initially told us that she consulted the management and that we were in the clear to include the skylight in our plans (which we did and we began demo. When it was time to make the hole in the ceiling we reached out because we had a question about something and THAT was when they suddenly had a problem with it). The president AND the property manager were flakey, they'd take days to weeks to respond to our calls/emails and after requesting one thing, they'd come back a week later requesting something else, multiple times. It was ridiculous. We've also probably lost a total of 4 weeks due to various materials we needed on back-order. A couple more weeks lost to poor scheduling of workers by our contractor. His father who lives abroad also passed away during this job so he went away for 3 weeks and practically nothing got done while he was gone. The rest was BS from the city like this. I can't even begin to tell you the shenanigans we've had to go through with the city...waiting a week or two for an inspector to come only to have the inspector ding us for something that wasn't mentioned the previous time, etc. Oh and I forgot to mention the work was only for our master bath/closet and the guest bath (we only have 2 bathrooms total) and we've been living in the unit this whole time so work on both concurrently wasn't an option. Some luck we have, eh?