The floor dips in the center gradually to about 3/8″ at the center.
Any tips you can offer before installing new hardwood flooring to it.
Any products/methods you can recommend just short of gutting the exiting floor & subfloor and leveling up.
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What is the size of this room? Are you saying the floor only drops 3/8" from wall to wall ? If this is an older home this would be considered about as good as it gets.
This should not be a problem if stalling the HW perpendicular to the floor joists (which are probably causing the sag). If you can see the deflection and want to correct, I would consider shims between the joists and subfloor, but again this sag is probably small enough not to cause a problem or be noticed.
3/8ths is Nirvana in an old house. Unless the room is terribly small
Id press on with a big smile on my face. This supposes the floor is firm
joists large enough. If not then going perp to them may be required
as the previous post mentions.
As others have said, 3/8" isn't much. Is this an upstairs floor? Ground floor over a crawl? Slab on grade? Bouncy? Creaky? How big is it? Probably no problem, but not enough info to say for sure.
-- J.S.
It's about 18x18 - 2 rooms.Living room and dining/kitchen.
Small semi-detached house.
Ground Floor.Basement is finished so I cannot add blocking from underneath. I do plan to add #30 roofers felt to even up the floors instead of rosin paper.I tried a small batch of the self leveling stuff and it's okay....on some area where it blended in and was very thin, it cracked. I may just try buying a latex primer and giving it another go around.I'll be using 3/4" solid prefinished flooring - most likely the BR111 flooring line.
I just installed laminate flooring in my family room this past Sunday. I had a 3/8" dip and a few deviations. I used a product called LevelQuik and it worked well for me. I mixed it according to directions and used an 8' metal straight edge. I am on on a concrete slab however.
If it's a solid sag, just sagged over the years, there should not be a problem. But, if the floor is bouncy, then the joists are either undersize or overspanned, or both, and now might be a good time to shore it in the middle, if possible.
"When asked if you can do something, tell'em "Why certainly I can", then get busy and find a way to do it." T. Roosevelt