Unlevel Hardwood Floor

Before you do you ll need to level the floor.

Unlevel hardwood floor.

Use builder s felt or shingles stapled to the floor to fill small low spots if you. If the floor simply tilts most hardwoods especially engineered hardwoods will be able to be installed quite easily. This can be done through the use of underlays and re surfacing. In order to properly install hardwood on uneven flooring the floor itself has to be smoothed out.

A plywood subfloor will bridge any minor waves in the existing floor and leveling compound would help too. If your floor is only mildly uneven however you may get away with installing them. Uneven floors are rarely caused by problems with the floor itself. Older homes will generally have more sloping floors than newer ones.

Floor leveling materials are available at your local hardware store and can save you a lot of work. On the top side of the floor another fix it idea to lay down new hardwood over the existing floor. Installation of floating floors are easy and fast because planks click or snap together quickly and float above the subflooring surface. Self leveling compound is similar to concrete typically coming in large bags in powder form.

You will have to make sure your joists can handle the addition of considerably more weight from the plywood subfloor and any floor coverings. When you are dealing with uneven floors one option that you have is to use self leveling compound. 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. A floating floor is easily installed without using glue staples or nails making it an exceptional diy floor option.

You can leave linoleum or sheet vinyl in place if it s difficult to remove or if removal would damage the sub floor. It s the worry that the cause of the sloping is a structural problem or defect. Floating floor the best floor for uneven surface. For concrete surfaces sanding and polishing may be required.

Mold and or rot in your crawl space. If you are nailing the hardwood floor in place choose cementitious leveling compound that you can nail through. The reasons that floors are not level range from the affects of ageing over time to foundation and framing issues. The cause is usually settling or shifting of the foundation underneath the floors.

This will expose the subfloor underneath which is where most leveling problems lie. 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. Or upon removal of the particle board you find another layer of old subfloor shim it level and install a thinner 1 2 plywood. Like tiles hardwood and laminate floors are generally a bad idea on uneven floors.