Fixing slanted floors in a house?
Question:I am considering buying a home Illinois. Unfortunately my price range is small; however there is a home my girlfriend and I love. The floors are slanted because the foundation has sunk because it’s a 100 or more year old home. Is there a way to fix the floors by adding more plywood or something to the lower part of the floor?
Answers:
The first thing to do is figure out the amount the floors are off. If there is a place where you can run a string from the front to the back of the house put a nail in the floor wher it is high then run the string to the low end if the height is not to great then you could take 1X3 pine strapping and run it trough 16in apart and shim under to get the height you need at varies points till you get to the high point. Keep in mind that you may have to add to the top of a doorway sadle and cut the door with the process. If the difference is more then 1 to 2 inches then I would have the low end jacked to get closer. It will take a combination if floors are to low on one end. Doing both on really unlevel floors will give you better results.
thats probably a big project...a carpenter would have to come in and raise your floor joist up by a jack and go from their..its difficult to see exactly how big a problem you would have but a carpenter could tell you exactly how hard the job would be if he came out and looked it over...
Just from the experience of selling a rental property with "settling", or slanted floors, I was told the man was going to brace the existing floor and then go over the area with an entirely new floor. He said trying to move the floor upward could cause problems with the existing walls. I would talk to one or more contractor to get an idea of what your individual situation might be. If it is "normal" settling, it's one thing, but I knew somone that bought a house that had been on a really old area of land fill, which should have been settled long before, and they ended up with slanted floors.
They sold the house because that was a real mess.
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