I looked at a property this weekend that had several floors (vinyl and carpeted) that were severely sloping.
The outside of the house looks good, it is on a good piece of property, only needs paint and very slight TLC otherwise, retails for $25K under comps… but the darn sloping floors.
Is there anyone out there in REI land that can guide me in the best way (economical) to have the floors fixed and what costs may be associated where the sloping floors cover 800 square feet over several rooms?
Is it pier and beam? Sounds like a potential foundation issue. I’d get a foundation repair company (or three) out there during the option period to give you estimates. They’ll probably have to jack up the foundation and put shims under it.
The joists are 2"x8". After doing a bit of reading, it sounds like it may be a foundation problem to me as well.
Put a marble on the floor. If it take offfffffffff Run from thr property
If I rolled a marble up the floor and the floor was full of snow, a snowball would come
crashing down and crush me like a bug.
The first thing to do prior to attempting to fix the floors is to find out the cause. If it is the foundation, then it will be more work than jacking up the house. It all depends on how sloped the floors are.
On my house, my floors were sloped drastically and it was a foundation issue along with no drainage. So I had pier and post and then I paid to reinforce the foundation, then added drainage to keep the area dry. Then I fixed the floors.
After talking to sooo many contractors, no one could really give me a good solution. Forget using that mixed cement goop than dries and makes the floor even unless you have a slab foundation. The best thing to do is to cut pieces of wood to shim the floor to balance and then put plywood on top. It takes a lot of time to make it even but it works and is better than trying to tear up the subfloor.
Jacking up the house is not the best solution as there may be some settling afterwards and you are still stuck with sloping floors.
Anyways, good luck!
Artlogic, thanks for the advice. I decided to revisit the property through a call with the homeowner. The home has foundation problems. Seems that the property was built in the '20’s and about 5 years ago, things started to sink… and crack. The homeowner never took care of the problems and over time, the problem only got worse. For a newcomer, I’m about to tackle replacing toilets, putting up drywall, carpeting, tile, etc… on another property (some of that will be contracted out).
I’m going to pass on this one because I firmly believe that the numbers simply ain’t gonna work anymore with what the homeowner considered to be his rock bottom price.
Sounds like a great plan, Pauly! These properties are best left for the more experienced and/or those with contractor backgrounds! There are enough “easy” properties!
Keith
Paully.
I am working on a deal such as this and have the same problems on the side foundation due to water/drainage. Floor in the middle of home is sloped down and there is a beam that is cracked. I had a couple of contractors come out and bid the job and as long as the numbers work, I dont see why not.
Any other insights on this?
Good luck to ya…