Uneven kitchen floor

[Brisen]

About a year ago, we moved into our house. It is a fixer upper. The kitchen is the oldest section of the house (about 100 years) and the floor has a very obvious slant (if you spill on the table or floor, it's going to spread straight to the low end, lol). I would say there is maybe a 2" difference in height from the high to the low end.

Right now, it is covered in low-pile carpet. My kids spill a lot, and it seems that it's often milk. When it's really hot and humid in the summer, I feel like the kitchen smells musty. I suppose steam cleaning might help, but I'm looking for another flooring we can put on for now, until we figure out if we're going to move the kitchen to another room, or if we're going to keep it here and pull out the cabinets and level the floor before we put new flooring down. I've heard that vinyl can be OK on an uneven surface. Can anyone give me ideas for finding it cheap? Is it something you can buy used, or does pulling it up ruin it? I dont' think the floor is really bumpy, just slanted (though I doubt it's perfectly flat on the grade, either).

[artemis33]

Have you checked to see what is under the carpet? Most homes that old had wood originally. You may be able to restore them.

[lifeguard]

Yeah, I think I'd pull up the carpet, give whatever is underneath a good cleaning & then if it's not liveable paint it with a couple of coats of floor paint.

[Brisen]

It looks like it's tile (linoleum? Hard square tiles, but not ceramic) over plywood. I hadn't thought about floor paint; we'll probably end up pulling up the tile eventually anyway, so maybe we'll just do that now and paint.

We had applesauce and vomit on the floor today.

[elsie]

I would just pull up the carpet, deal with whatever floor is underneath and use some cheap area rugs if it is really bad.

[SleeplessMommy]

Pull up the carpet. Stick-on floor tiles cost $.50-1 per square foot and are an easy DIY.

You could probably bring in a professional to the shim/jack that part of the house 2" to make it level. I am not sure if your cabinets are level or sloped?

[amj'smommy]

we live in an old but fixed up (not to dh's standards though, lol he's a carpenter by trade so it's a never ending project for us ) farm house as well. Our kitchen floor also has a slight slant and dh used those plastic furniture circle things (the name escapes me now) and we just leveled the kitchen table so now the spills stay on the table I would pull up the carpet however if I were you.... my sister had carpet in her kitchen and it doesn't take long for it to get gross

[Carson]

Yikes, few things are worse than carpet in a kitchen, and with kids, ew!

The floor in our old house sloped but we didn't know it until we took the old floor up which was peel & stick tiles stuck on 1/2" plywood sheets. Took up the plywood to find a variety of shims and strips which had been used to level the floor. So I HTH give you an idea of how to correct the problem permanently without jacking your house.

As for your current situation, I would take up the carpet and do the peel & sticks - if you clean the surface thoroughly and lay the tiles carefully they can look good and last a pretty long time. If you are happy with the kitchen otherwise, there are even some more 'advanced' P&S that you apply grout to as well.

[krolissa]

We have a slant in our kitchen floor, as well. The fridge door swings shut even though we have it shimmed. We put down peel and stick vinyl plank flooring that we found at Big Lots. The whole kitchen cost less than 100 bucks. It looks great and is easy to clean!

[Brisen]

Our cabinets are level -- they were put in relatively recently and I think they must have taken the slope into account when they were installed.

We do plan on levelling out the floor by adding height where necessary once we do the real renovations for the kitchen, which will either mean just moving it to the next room over (which is newer and has a level floor) so we still have a working kitchen while the renovations are happening, and then evening out the floor in what is now the kitchen, or taking all of the appliances and cabinets out of the kitchen, levelling the floor, putting in new flooring, and then putting the cabinets etc. back. What I'm trying to do for now is just a quick, cheap fix until we start the renovations.

Thanks for the ideas, everyone -- I'll keep my eye on the home improvement store flyers for sales on flooring. And maybe I'll just staple a heavy-duty plastic dropcloth over the carpet until we can get something else down. Just before our oldest was born, we moved into a townhouse. It had a teeny galley kitchen and then a dining room -- which had med-pile carpet. I kept a vinyl table cloth under the table and ds's high chair, but even that could only catch so much. Ugh. I was so happy when dh pulled it up. That setup seemed really common for townhouses in that area, which were also very common places for people just starting to have kids to live.

[thixle]

Originally Posted by Brisen

And maybe I'll just staple a heavy-duty plastic dropcloth over the carpet until we can get something else down.

Please don't do that, you'll trap any moisture under there in the carpet and it will mold and stink, and possibly rot your subfloor! (ahem, ask me how I know )

Rip that carpet out, if the subfloor is bad but solid, staple the plastic drop cloth down and sticky-tile over that. Then when you are ready to really do the kitchen floor, you pull up the plastic and don't have to worry about adhesives sticking and the headache of remove each tile individually. Just don't put too many staples in! If you have a Fred's Dollar Store, Big Lots, or similar, you can get sticky tiles 25 for $10 (.40 a square foot) and they will last 3-5 years.

[Brisen]

thixle, that's a great idea, thanks!