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October 14, 2009
Sloped Floors?
We're apartment hunting in Brooklyn, and there's an apartment in a brownstone we love, but the floors are sloped in the living and bed rooms... is this 100% building settling (i.e. nothing to be done) or is there a chance that it's just the unit and we can fix it... and if it's the latter, how much does that cost? And how do you tell what the problem is in the first place? It's not the slope we're used to-- the kind where it slopes up toward the walls-- it's just random sloping in the middle of the room....
Anyway, thanks so much for your help on this-- we're 1st time home buyers, and new to all this!
Comments
I have an 1875 house that had that problem. When I had my original parquet floors redone the workers just built it up and leveled it, than installed the parquet flooring. What a difference!
Posted by: Giovanna at October 14, 2009 9:21 PM
It could be from building settling and it could be a minor fix as Giovanna describes. It's possible that it could be more substantial—a structural problem with a joist or beam on your floor or a floor below. Even during inspection, the cause might not
be obvious.
Posted by: vinca at October 15, 2009 11:16 AM
I had this problem and did the same thing - took off the floors, leveled the subflooring and reinstalled flooring.
Also, with the new flooring, I reproduced the patterning of the original parquets (missing, broken, stained and overall hopeless....) and it looks great. The cause was settling due to bad renovations, i.e. cutting joists for plumbing and tinkering with weightbearing walls by "renovators" of days past. I had an engineered beam installed to support the floor which was compromised and which was the original cause of the uneven flooring.
Posted by: donatella at October 15, 2009 2:03 PM
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