Floor leveling – a line in your budget. WHY? We always include an allowance for leveling the subfloors when new flooring are being installed. It is often difficult to predict what exactly may be required until the existing floor is removed. Ultimately, how good your brand new flooring will look is in great part determined by what it is being applied to. There are several factors to consider, but certainly type of existing subfloor, age of home and what is being removed could all have an impact.

Carpet can hide a multitude of sins underneath the underlay. Removing tile can often cause damage to the subfloor as the mortar is adhered so strongly to the subfloor. In all case studies below, Engineered Hardwood Flooring was being installed in the Greater Vancouver Area.

leveling homes in delta

CASE STUDY 1

A twelve year old Executive Home with three existing types of flooring through the main floor – carpet, tile and strip hardwood on wood subfloor. The subfloor was actually in good condition, the reason we added a layer of plywood subfloor in this case was to actually bring the height up, so when the hardwood was installed it was at the same height as the tiled entrance, and then no need for any transition strips… All part of the planning! Once the tile was installed, we determined how much height we needed. Seamless.

CASE STUDY 2

A fifteen year old Executive home with existing carpet upstairs and through the main floor, except for the family room/kitchen area where the existing wood flooring was glued down as there was radiant floor heat and all subfloor was concrete. Aside from the two days it took to remove the existing glued down floor in the kitchen area, the entire second floor required sixty bags of leveling concrete. This was the most expensive floor leveling project to date.

CASE STUDY 3

A 30 year old family home, with a combination of existing carpet, linoleum and laminate flooring laid on OSB (oriented strand board). Between the house settling and the older type OSB, this floor had hills and valleys throughout the main floor. Our professional installer had to sand down the high spots, pulled out some nails in the low spots so that he could shim from underneath and then screw this all down at the edges (less chance of squeaking). Then a new plywood subfloor was installed over top, running the opposite direction.

 

Floor leveling is labour intensive. The goal may even be for improvement – not completely level, depending on the situation. These three examples are to highlight possible scenarios you may encounter in your renovation, or maybe your home will not require any leveling, and that is money in your budget to use elsewhere. Hardwood flooring is often one of the larger budget items in a renovation, and this is why we always include floor leveling in your budget.

Please contact Alair Homes Delta for more information on renovations and custom homes.