dodgy floors

[Steve]

I have posted here before about a wonky door frame in our house. Now its time for the floors!

The kitchen was once divided into 2 rooms, a small kitchen and a small bathroom (only bathroom used to be downstairs). The kitchen had concrete floor, and the bathroom had floorboards. When the wall between the 2 was removed (before we moved in) there was a slight drop from the floorboards to the concrete. This was "ramped" by using cement on top of the remaining bricks at the bottom of the removed wall. Over the years, the floorboards have been lifted numerous times, and now a couple of them have rather large gaps between them (tongue AND grooves both snapped off over time) and the lino we layed a few years ago now has a couple of holes in from high heels where these gaps are.

What would YOU do in this scenario? We have debated about self-levelling stuff on the lower conrete, but there is really good quality (but horrid design) lino tiles on this bit, and removing these would be a real chore. The line between the 2 is not even straight across, it was an L-shaped bathroom and we ideally want ceramic tiles right through!

We have also had a new glass-front tall wall unit delivered for the front room, also floorboards. This room is quite large, and i know there is a sleeper wall half way across the room, under the boards (i can get under here, there's 3 foot of space). When i walk across the room the wall unit shakes quite a bit and im worried that one day someone will run past it and glasses in it will fall and break etc. Would another sleeper wall cure this, under the front of the cabinet? Even one made of heavy timber, wedged between the joists and the concrete? Opinions welcome! (by the way, the cabinet is not designed to be anchored to the wall, or i would do this!)

 

[Fliss]

In your situation, I would get a couple of quotes from some ceramic tile fitters and take note of how they propose to sort out the floor in order to lay level tiles. If it sounded simple, I would do it myself - if not, I would appoint one of the tile fitters! Is the lino really vinyl? The people who laid our vinyl in our kitchen said that it was inadvisable to lay vinyl directly onto floorboards and put a flooring grade hardboard underneath to make sure it was smooth and level. Could you somehow level out your floor with that? I don't know if you can lay ceramic tiles onto it or whether you can put it on top of existing lino, though - or whether you could put two layers of it down on your lower section. In our bathroom, some of our floorboards where higher than others, so I put a bit of cardboard at strategic places under the hardboard, but I only did it last week, so don't know how successful that will prove to be... I expect it will attract some derision and horror from proper DIY people.

 

[Steve]

Hi Fliss, thanks for replying!

The lino is vinyl, yes, the stuff that comes on a roll, we had the same stuff laid in the bathroom, by professional fitters (well, they were from the shop we bought it from) at the same time the carpets in the whole house were changed too.

So i'm assuming the fitters just couldn't be bothered with making good the old floorboards. We're considering taking up all the old floorboards and finding some material that is slightly thinner (chipboard?), as well as somehow taking a bit off the tops of the joists (strength doesn't really matter here, the span is only 7 foot max, and a few mm isn't going to matter much). This way, the boards will be level with the concrete / lino tile floor and we will have a new surface with no holes in to lay the tiles on! and i think you can lay tiles on wood, you need proper flexible adhesive though. Especially on our floors