How to Level an Unlevel Floor
All of us who own old houses know about unlevel floors. The kind that if you spill something it immediately starts a river running to a certain corner of the room,faster than you can run for the paper towels One of my kids asked once what would happen if you spilled something on a level floor. They want to know if it would just stay there.
Our kitchen floor was very unlevel. It was also made worse my the previous owners who tried to level it, but failed miserably and installed vinyl flooring over a floor so unlevel that it undulated.
We tore off the vinyl. The plywood under the vinyl. The linoleum under the plywood. And then the plywood that was under the linoleum.
And then we wept, because it didn’t look any better and we had no idea what to do next.
Luckily we had a contractor who was working on our house and felt like giving us some much needed advice.
We found the high point in the floor and using a long level attached firring strips to the floor. That part was not that revolutionary to us, we had done things like that before. The problem we usually faced was the spaced between the firring strips left too much bounce in the subfloor, especially if you planned on tiling.
Our contractor, and the flooring expert who was out at our house to refinish some hardwood floor agreed, told us to use the thinset mortar to fill in the spaces between the firring strips. For whatever reason neither of them are thrilled with the stuff that is sold as leveling compound. I am not really sure if there is a problem with the leveling compound perse, or if they just prefer their old school methods.
Once this dried we laid our plywood subfloor right on top.
I don’t think that we have another floor in our home that is as level or sturdy.
