How to level a floor for tiling when one floor joist sits higher than the others.?
Question:I am trying to lay tile in a front entrance and adjacent bathroom. About 3 feet in from the front door is a joist that sits about ¼ inch above the rest. As a result, there is a steep slope in the sub-floor between this joist and the joists on either side of it. The joists run parallel to the front of the house and the wall the divides the bathroom from the rest of the entranceway. However, because this joist lays about 1 inch away from the bathroom wall for about half its length it will be difficult to access the sub-floor in this section. Plus I need to tile on both sides of this dividing wall.
At the moment I thinking it would be best to rip up the floor around the joist and plane the joists top until its level with the surrounding joists. But the proximity of the joist to the bathroom wall would make this tricky. Self-leveling cement has also crossed my mind, but I think it’s a much weaker solution.
Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.
JC.
Answers:
JC, I'm assuming any added height is an issue.
One possible cause just occured to me, This bath wall may actually be pulling the floor and joist up... maybe you can use the wall [shimming between the bottom plate and the subfloor] to separate the wall from the floor and drive the joist down...
can you get to it from below? If so, you might cut up from the bottom of joist in one or two spots to let it settle down and then sister a straight joist in next to it. there are several variations of this methods i can think of.
one is cutting plywood along either side of joist, remove plywood from top of joist. level remaining plywood and bolt "ledgers" to sides of joist to bear edge of remaining plywood.
if working from below isn't possible, planing from on top is probably your best idea.
You could search and or post something here, I'm sure others have dealt with this before:
http://www.johnbridge.com/vbulletin/foru...
shim it
Build the others up to meet the height.
Just use the thinset to level it,. Trust me it's not the end of the world, just level it with the thinset, IT'LL WORK
Self-leveling cement!
http://www.usehickson.com/stonemason/flo...
If we're only talking about 1/4 inch, this is much ado about nothing. The self-leveling cement would definitely work, and just using a little extra thinset would probably work as well. Anything beyond that, you're just making extra work for yourself.
agree with the last answer.. just use the cement or thinset to level it out.. i see no reason for you to mess with the joists..
Thinset IS a good idea here (according to your description of the problem, but its only part of a real solution. Thinset or self-leveling compound shouldnt be used for more than 1/4" total, and spread out over a large area it will most likely crack over time (not next week, but eventually). I suggest using a combination of self-leveling first, hardibacker cement board and then another layer of self-leveling before the thinset mortar. All these layers combined, provided you HAVE this much room to raise the level of the floor, will make the floor level.
You're insight into planing the top of the joist will work as well, provided the labor involved is acceptable to you.
level it out with mortar
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