Unlevel Hardwood Floor

This can be done through the use of underlays and re surfacing.

Unlevel hardwood floor.

If you are nailing the hardwood floor in place choose cementitious leveling compound that you can nail through. Or upon removal of the particle board you find another layer of old subfloor shim it level and install a thinner 1 2 plywood. The reasons that floors are not level range from the affects of ageing over time to foundation and framing issues. Some of which can be serious and expensive to correct.

You can leave linoleum or sheet vinyl in place if it s difficult to remove or if removal would damage the sub floor. Floating floor the best floor for uneven surface. For concrete surfaces sanding and polishing may be required. Simply hire a carpenter to remove all the particle board sister the joists if they are out of level and install new 3 4 plywood subfloor.

Older homes will generally have more sloping floors than newer ones. If the floor beams and joists are made from wood like the ones above a crawl space they will usually bend rather than crack. Like tiles hardwood and laminate floors are generally a bad idea on uneven floors. Mold and or rot in your crawl space.

Use a pry bar to pull up hardwood floors one section at a time or unfasten carpet or laminate and roll it up from one end. Installation of floating floors are easy and fast because planks click or snap together quickly and float above the subflooring surface. Uneven floors are rarely caused by problems with the floor itself. The cause is usually settling or shifting of the foundation underneath the floors.

This compound can potentially be utilized on a concrete slab or a wood subfloor and it works well when you are dealing with dips in the floor. This will expose the subfloor underneath which is where most leveling problems lie. If the floor simply tilts most hardwoods especially engineered hardwoods will be able to be installed quite easily. If your floor is only mildly uneven however you may get away with installing them.

A plywood subfloor will bridge any minor waves in the existing floor and leveling compound would help too. On the top side of the floor another fix it idea to lay down new hardwood over the existing floor. Use builder s felt or shingles stapled to the floor to fill small low spots if you. Floor leveling materials are available at your local hardware store and can save you a lot of work.

In order to properly install hardwood on uneven flooring the floor itself has to be smoothed out. When you are dealing with uneven floors one option that you have is to use self leveling compound. It s the worry that the cause of the sloping is a structural problem or defect. Self leveling compound is similar to concrete typically coming in large bags in powder form.