The fact of the matter is your house is moving. All buildings do. Up, down, side to side. Ground shifts. Lumber expands and contracts. Someone 97 years ago cut a corner. It happens, it’s okay. But now it’s time to renovate the entire building. Maybe it’s just time to swap out some cabinets or refinish hardwood floors. How much time and money should you spend to level a room? How much for a whole house renovation? First of all the area to be leveled will never be perfect. Even if you manage to get everything within a 1/16th of where you want it, it’s not gonna stay that way for very long. So choose your battles.
As a rule of thumb I find kitchens to be the most worthy the effort. Cabinets are by no means cheap and neither are countertops. Kitchens are one of the most frequently occupied room in a house and therefore, why not spend the most money there? The problem lies in installing a series of square items in a non-square room and making it look square. And while there are built in “cheats” in your filler panels and toe kicks, they can only hide so much. If you’re going to spend tens of thousands of dollars on high end custom made kitchen cabinets, you really want to keep your shimming to a minimum. So spend the time and money to level the room. I know it sounds horrible but a lot of times you wouldn’t notice a 1/2″ fall in a room over 12′. Unless you fill the room with cabinets. The horizontal lines of countertops and the bottoms of your wall cabinets will draw your eye to the deficiencies much quicker
Next on my leveling priority list is stairs. You have to remember, nobody ever notices a level, plumb and evenly spaced stair case, but if it’s leaning/twisting or has an odd stair height, everyone notices. It’s uncomfortable to walk stairs that lean and even if they are structurally sound, they usually don’t feel like it. So keep in mind, wherever your stair stringers land is worth the effort to straighten out.
After those two, a lot of different factors start playing into the equation. What type of flooring is going to be installed? Carpet will always disguise dips and falls better than tile or hardwood. Third floor bedrooms aren’t going to be as important as the main living space. Ideally, you want the whole house back to it’s “happy place” of level and plumb, but it’s not always financially, or for that matter physically possible.
My next posting will begin to discuss methods of structural leveling that I’ve had success with in joist pocket in brick and joist on beam construction.
