Loading…
12
Walked into a 1920s house in Portland and the floor felt like a trampoline
I was there to give a quote on some new vinyl plank, and the whole living room floor had a crazy bounce to it. The homeowner said it was original, and I found the joists were spaced way too far apart, like 24 inches on center. I had to explain that no new flooring would fix that springy feeling without fixing the structure underneath first. Has anyone else run into floors where the subfloor itself is the real problem?
3 comments
Log in to join the discussion
Log In3 Comments
kaimiller5mo ago
Ever try to bounce a quarter on a floor like that? I did once in an old farmhouse, thought I could just slap some plywood over the gaps. Nope. The whole room felt like a cheap diving board. I ended up sistering like every other joist before it even felt solid. That springy subfloor feeling is the worst, it just laughs at your new flooring plans.
8
the_cameron5mo ago
Yeah, the subfloor laughing at your new flooring plans is the perfect way to put it. It's like the house is playing a prank on you, and you're the sucker who showed up with a box of vinyl planks. You can almost hear the old joists creaking, "Go ahead, make my day." Trying to fix that with just a new surface is like putting a fresh coat of paint on a car with no engine.
4
aaron1974mo ago
I helped my buddy rip out an entire kitchen floor in a 1920s bungalow last summer, and we found three different layers of linoleum and quarter-round covering a spot where the subfloor had actually rotted through. There was literally a 4-inch soft spot right in front of the sink. We had to cut out a 3-foot section of the old pine subfloor and patch in new plywood and blocking just to get a flat surface. That springy feeling never really goes away unless you address the structure underneath, it just transfers the bounce to a different spot. Have you ever crawled under a house like that and actually seen the joists from below?
1