install4you
Active Member
Greetings to all.
I just posted my nubie intro & I'm in a time crunch, so Ill jump right into my request for advice. I'll start by trying to answer the questions you might ask.
I'm in central Alabama in a house built in 1979. Except for the roof trusses it's a stick build with a 1/2 daylight basement on a slab. The single main level is all plywood subfloor. I've already installed nail-down, prefinished 5/8" bamboo everywhere upstairs except the kitchen & bathrooms. In one room I had a significant sharp hump where I had to remove the subfloor & shave the top of the joist. The rest hasn't been too bad until I found something different in the last room & need some advice.
The last 2 rooms are the MBR & another BR with a common exterior wall over the garage doors. We had to have some helical piers installed in 2020, so I know there has been some settling, but my problem might have been sloppy construction. The floor joists run front to back & the flooring is perpendicular to them throughout the house. From about 18" away from the wall, there's a drop of about 1/4"' all the way across that end of the house. The same drop exists in both MBR & the last room I'm working on now. In the MBR I used staggered layers of felt to build up to a flat surface. In this room, the joist about 18' from the wall seems to sit a little high, causing a hump (parallel to the joist) just before the drop to the wall. From the center of the room to the start of the down slope there's a rise of almost 1/4 bubble on a 4' level. With 25+ years installing draperies & pictures, I may be too picky about level. I know that, up to a point, flat is more important than level with hardwood.
So here's my quandary. Do I sand down the hump & finish out the flatness with trowel-on leveler, or build up the down slope with staggered strips of felt to produce a flat surface in the same plane with the slight rise from the center of the room? Unlike the middle-of-the-room place where I removed the subfloor to deal with the hump, all this subfloor extends under the bottom plate of the exterior wall.
I hope this is clear. Please ask if I need to clarify something. After I read several threads about leveling floors, I'm grateful for this minor problem. My philosophy has been that the only way to be right most of the time is to aim for perfect every time. In light my limited experience I have to do a lot of research.
Thanks,
Eddie
I just posted my nubie intro & I'm in a time crunch, so Ill jump right into my request for advice. I'll start by trying to answer the questions you might ask.
I'm in central Alabama in a house built in 1979. Except for the roof trusses it's a stick build with a 1/2 daylight basement on a slab. The single main level is all plywood subfloor. I've already installed nail-down, prefinished 5/8" bamboo everywhere upstairs except the kitchen & bathrooms. In one room I had a significant sharp hump where I had to remove the subfloor & shave the top of the joist. The rest hasn't been too bad until I found something different in the last room & need some advice.
The last 2 rooms are the MBR & another BR with a common exterior wall over the garage doors. We had to have some helical piers installed in 2020, so I know there has been some settling, but my problem might have been sloppy construction. The floor joists run front to back & the flooring is perpendicular to them throughout the house. From about 18" away from the wall, there's a drop of about 1/4"' all the way across that end of the house. The same drop exists in both MBR & the last room I'm working on now. In the MBR I used staggered layers of felt to build up to a flat surface. In this room, the joist about 18' from the wall seems to sit a little high, causing a hump (parallel to the joist) just before the drop to the wall. From the center of the room to the start of the down slope there's a rise of almost 1/4 bubble on a 4' level. With 25+ years installing draperies & pictures, I may be too picky about level. I know that, up to a point, flat is more important than level with hardwood.
So here's my quandary. Do I sand down the hump & finish out the flatness with trowel-on leveler, or build up the down slope with staggered strips of felt to produce a flat surface in the same plane with the slight rise from the center of the room? Unlike the middle-of-the-room place where I removed the subfloor to deal with the hump, all this subfloor extends under the bottom plate of the exterior wall.
I hope this is clear. Please ask if I need to clarify something. After I read several threads about leveling floors, I'm grateful for this minor problem. My philosophy has been that the only way to be right most of the time is to aim for perfect every time. In light my limited experience I have to do a lot of research.
Thanks,
Eddie
