Perhaps you have decided that you are tired of your beat up, stained up carpets or your tile that no longer looks clean, even after it is mopped. Now, you are trying to figure out which flooring option is right for you, because you already know that your older home is unlevel. There is a little bit of good news. Just because you have an old home with a sagging floor; you do not need to stick with carpet to hide the fact it is not level. You simply need to discover how to level up the floor you have. Then you will be able to use any type of flooring you want. You can learn how to level your floor before tackling a flooring installation.
The first step in straightening up your floor is to eliminate the old flooring that you want to replace. If you are tearing up carpet, you should eliminate the carpet and padding. If you are removing old wood flooring or tile, you should also remove any adhesive that is on the floor. Once that is done and everything is cleaned up, you have three options. You can use a leveling compound, plywood, or grind down the old floor.
If you choose to use plywood, you will need to purchase enough plywood to cover the entire area. It is very important that the edges of the plywood match up, otherwise you will still have an uneven floor. However, rather than gentle slopes, you will have sharp corners and edges.
Grinding is mostly reserved for uneven concrete floors, but it can be done with wood as well. Wood grinding will require the use of a sander rather than the grinder. Either way, this works best if you have only a large hump in the middle of your floor. For floors that kind of wave from one area to the next, you will put in a lot of effort if you try to grind it down.
The best option, according to most people is self-leveling compound. This compound is thick and mimics concrete. It is sold in large bags that you mix with water. The paste is used when it is thick and you spread it out on the existing floor using a trowel. Shallow dips in the floor will dry quickly and deep dips may require more than one layer. Once it dries, you can apply any flooring type you want.
