Sloping Floor in Row House - WWYD?

[Anonymous]

I am under contract to buy an attached row house (typical Wardman style) in DC. The floor has a noticeable slope. We had a structural engineer inspection and he said that there isn't a problem with the foundation, and that this is common among row houses of this vintage (in fact, we looked at another house on the same street and it sloped as well). I love everything else about the house, but I find the slope annoying. I can pull out under the inspection contingency, but like I said I really like the house otherwise. I've heard of people "leveling out" the floor in this situation. Anyone done this? Ballpark costs? Or should I just learn to live with it?

TIA.

[Anonymous]

Can't speak to the precise cost but I think leveling could be very expensive and could cause some problems you may not anticipate. You'll end up with cracks in your plaster that will have to be repaired, seams in trim that could come apart, and worse, you could end up putting strain on pipes in the walls.

My freestanding house (not rowhouse) has a significant sag toward the center, and we just think of it as part of the house. It's structurally sound, so we don't worry about further sag. Certainly we'd prefer level floors, but the cost and potentially huge amount of damage to repair from leveling means we've never even considered it.

[Anonymous]

Ours has a huge slope - you learn to live with it. And you know you can always find a pen and some change under the furniture at that end of the house.

[Anonymous]

I've found the sleeping porch portion of most of the rowhouses I've been in to have a minor slope, usually away from the house.

[Anonymous]

Most older houses sag. It could be very costly - you'd probably have to tear everything out to the beams and replace the subfloor with shims to make it level.

[Anonymous]

There are two things being discussed here and I am an expert in neither.

A) Simple, but not necessarily inexpensive because it takes skilled labor and may require removing + replacing ceilings:

Shimming the floors so they are level. This will not mess with the walls/windows, etc. We will probably do this on our main level because the floor boards are exposed in the basement.

B) Bigger job, presumably more expensive:

Leveling the house- may require foundation work.

Get some quotes OP, it's really the only way to know.

To the sleeping porch PP, porches were built that way. On enclosed porches, floors can be laid using leveling material to offset the slope.

If you don't already read PoPville, start- it's a great resource for those of us with old DC houses.

[Anonymous]

This is very common. We just bought an old row house with badly sloped floors - inspector said it was fine, contractor (we are gutting) said it was fine and probably more than we want to deal with unless it really bothers us and we want to pay a lot to tear our the floors and deal with it.

[Anonymous]

We had a small slope that affected only the kitchen in our first home (old Brownstone in Boston). When we redid the kitchen, they added extra subflooring before tiling which solved our problem.

[Anonymous]

We have this on the second floor of our end unit DC row house. Also had an engineer come through and it's just a fact of the house, nothing wrong structurally. We've been there a year and the only time I notice it is when I go to hang things on the wall in that area because it doesn't look level to me.

[Anonymous]

You get used to them. Our original hardwood more than makes up for the slope.

[Anonymous]

[quote=Anonymous]I've found the sleeping porch portion of most of the rowhouses I've been in to have a minor slope, usually away from the house.


That was done on purpose to drain rain and moisture off the screened in porch. I would definitely not buy any home (and I did own a D.C. rowhouse) with a sloping floor. It will be difficult to resell. OP, if it annoys you now, it will annoy you every day of your life.

[Anonymous]

Keep in mind that any leveling work you do could affect neighbors attached to either side of you - a headache of unintended consequences.

[Anonymous]

over 100 year old rowhouse owner here. I was told not to level because the house has settled and is stable now. Unless you do a complete gut and just want to add some subflooring. But don't do anything to the original joists

[Anonymous]

We only leveled our bathroom floor, but it was not a huge deal. They took off the old floor, shaved the studs to be level, and put on a new floor (we were getting the floor redone anyway, so the shaving was not a big add-on)

[Anonymous]

Our 1940s era freestanding has a sloped floor where a bathroom transitions to a hallway. About 30 square feet. We've had two different structural engineers look at it, as well as two remodelers and the opinion is always the same - don't worry about it and just shim it from the top when you go to re-do the floor material.