Prior to purchasing our house, we could easily see with the naked eye that the floor in the foyer was not level…this was also the case for the area near/inside the pantry in the kitchen. In the foyer, the floor sloped down to the right toward the master bedroom wall. In the kitchen, it sloped down toward the foyer wall.
The slope in the floor over by the pantry – the level’s bubble maxed out to one side is probably not a good thing.
After we demolished the kitchen floor, we discovered that the area toward the center of the room was also not level. In this instance, the floor was not sloping or sagging… it was bowed up in the center.
A high spot in the floor is a real problem: low joists you can jack up, but with high joists… there’s not much you can do.
We briefly looked into self-leveling-products, but quickly dismissed the idea. First off, we couldn’t find any information online about using a self-leveling-cement on a plywood subfloor. Every resource online was referring to leveling a concrete floor.
Here were our concerns:
•We were pretty sure that the product would seep into cracks and flow down into the basement without some sort of lining.
•We were also unsure about the added weight.
•We needed to be able to nail down real hardwood flooring, which you can’t do with concrete.
•We needed to maintain the current floor elevation to match up with the oak floor in the adjoining rooms.
So, self leveling cement was out. What did we decide to do? Hide the problem with the kitchen island.
Yep. The “easy” way out – our solution was to do nothing. The bow in the center of the room was contained to the exact area we were thinking of placing our island. Boom. Done. (Well, not quite, we knew we needed to address the sloping floor on the other side of the kitchen and in the foyer, but that’s a project for another day.)
I remember detesting these 80’s contemporary split-levels at one time in my life. But now I find them beautiful. The only drawback is climbing the d@&# stairs multiple times with loads of groceries! (On the flip side, it’s a great workout!) So glad to see you bringing this one back to life and can’t wait to see what you do with it.
That’s great that it worked out so your island could hide the issue! Looking forward to seeing how you addressed the sloping floor issue in the other areas.
Great solution to your problem! Hopefully it all works out well and there’s no damage over time.