DIY: Easiest Way To Level An OLD WOOD FLOOR - Using Screws and a Level

today I'm gonna show you how to level a floor using just a level and some screws my name is Derrick this is my wife Jenny we bought a fixer-upper we remodel his house one day at a time all while living here be sure to subscribe the channel and turn on notifications get all the latest videos to track our progress you'll find lots of how-to videos with step-by-step instructions to help you your next do-it-yourself project welcome to the rundown reborn Channel I've got to level a floor I started in the other room at the highest point I could find and work my way across that room and at this point I've got close to probably an inch maybe an inch and a half buildup I've got to make up into this room where the sheet is that's an opening into this next room which is a dining room and I'm gonna bring this floor on through here and keep it level all the way throughout this living room this whole house is crooked there's been settlement the corners have settled it's very uneven so we're gonna fix that with just some screws in my drill and this level first thing I need to do is bring this panel up I fortunately had to do some work underneath and so I can go ahead and lift this panel up and determine where the joists are if you don't have the privilege of doing something like that you did a couple things you can do remove a floor board to identify exactly where the floor joists are or many of the floor boards will have seams and usually those seem to kuranda joists I'm gonna do it the easy way I'll lift this panel up find out where the toys are all right so I'm down here in the crawlspace I've got this piece of floor deck up I've got a piece of my kids sidewalk chalk I'm basically gonna mark where the center of these joists are on this floor [Music] these are the existing joists now take my tape measure and see what the spacing is there's somewhat consistently spaced at 16 inches this last one here right however is a little extra I'm not gonna go ahead and pull out the other board I think we can figure it out from there so now I'll seal this floor up get it screwed down tight and start working on leveling basically wanting to identify where these joist lines are on this floor and I want to lay it out with chalk so I'm just gonna mark on the floor with this chalk where these joists are gonna be it's not an exact science but we got a general idea where these joists are so I can hit them with a screw later here's my existing floorboards here's my sue subfloor what I want to do is now identify where my ribs are then once those ribs are on or those sleepers then we'll lay new deck on top of that and screw down into those blocks of wood so to begin I'm gonna take my level here I've got my drill and I got me a box of long screws now what I want I want to go to the bottom of my floor deck where the blocking is most of these long levels will have a gauge that you can read from the top and I'm going to go right here and bring out my baseline and what I'm gonna do is start a screw here within the reach of my level just like so and I want to take this level and keep working that screw down until my bubble is in the center just a little more there the top of that screw is exactly level with the top of this floor over here so I can work from this screw now on to another screw anywhere on the floor and I'm going to triangulate and check all those screws with one another in their immediate vicinity once you have all these screws located we'll be ready to lay strips now before I start laying out a whole bunch of screws and one identify where my boards are gonna be in this case my rooms about 14 by 16 approximately and so I'm gonna need approximately eight sheets of this floor deck so what I need to do is identify where my first seam is going to be these sheets are tongue and groove we want those sheets to run perpendicular to the floor joist which means all my sleepers are gonna run across these floor joists will use the sleepers that we attach to the original floor as our screw strips to attach the floor deck onto alright I've laid my tape measure out here across the floor I know my first joints at about 48 inches so I'm gonna use a different colored piece of chalk and mark that point then I'm going to put my sleepers at 16 inches on center so every 16 inches from that first seam I'm gonna put a mark I can use the seams of my original floorboards as a guide to run a line across this floor you don't have that luxury you can always take additional measurements and connect the dot I set my level up as a straight edge I'm gonna run down this and that's where I'm gonna put a sleeper now we've got a few of those laid out and I've got a grid here my orange line so where my sleepers are gonna be the green lines where the joists are so that where those intersect that's where a potential screw is gonna get to go down the road here's my first screw right here using my chalk I like to draw a little circle around it cuz they're really hard to see when you're walking through here and you step on you'll end up bending them and wreck the level point I'll need one adjacent here on this spot right here so I'm gonna go ahead and put a new screw in there drive it down approximately the same distance check it for level nailed it on first try that will be a new screw that we use as a benchmark and from that screw will go on to a next one I'll go right here now I'll take this level and connect the dots and my existing ones bubbles in the middle now I can do another screw back in here keep working my way across the floor and we'll start to lay out this whole grid of screws so this screw since almost inch and a half this one just slightly higher this one and the eighth of an inch lower so you can see how uneven the floor is as we go by the time I get all these screws laid out and we'll have a perfectly level floor you can really see now as I've worked my way across this floor the screwed apps are varying quite a bit I've got over an inch and a half back behind me and here and this part of their floor not even a quarter of an inch now that makes some sense to me because that part of the house has settled dramatically out there on the edge it does make sense that there's some fall off towards the porch I'm going to keep on going across the floor and keep getting this floor level [Music] so as you can see here I've got a nice grid of screws laid out in this area I'm almost down to the floor the highest points probably over in this area towards the front of the house whenever I do a screw I check that level in as many directions as I can so I'm trying to basically create kind of a a spiderweb of screws from any given point to verify that we're we're level as we go across the floor so everything's looking good so far I've got about half the floor marked out just need to finish this out and then we'll start ripping those sleepers all right I've laid out quite a bit of these screws I'm gonna go ahead and start prepping some of the boards now over here in this corner you'll notice that I don't have a couple of screws around the perimeter right those are considered level points that actual floor sloped up to those points I mark those with an axe meaning that I want to put the deck directly on the surface of the floor there so I'm tapering from a zero level all the way to this side which is almost an inch and a half to do that now what I'm doing is I have a long two-by-four this one's a 12-footer this should do the whole stretch here in this spot so the first thing I need to do is determine how much depth I need here sometimes you can just push these down to the floor and you can take a measurement that way but in this case it's the sports just too stiff so I'm gonna do it with my tape measure here I'm measuring there at one in 7/16 so I'm going to mark that on the side of the board here and one in 7/16 and I circle though so I can find them I've got the board in the position that I actually want to put it once I put it on the floor this screw measures right at one and a half so we've got a sixteenth inch of drop there so I'm gonna mark this one at one and a half now I'll go to this side here at this screw I've got about 3/4 of an inch on this end I'm going to try to basically mark where the top of this surface is which is the bottom this deck here that I'm tying in to do that well set this square up on the floor try to get it as level as possible and transfer a mark to the two pi on the end here [Music] and now I've got my marks on the board I've got one right here got another one right here so I'm gonna take my level as a straight edge and just lay that across the marks like so I connect the dots I'm gonna do that for all the points on this board now I'm going to line down this board and that's basically the bottom surface then this flat surface will be my top later so I'm gonna go ahead and rip down the center of this board right against this line and then we'll screw it down wet and pick me up a brand new saw it's a little four-inch handheld saw I was using jigsaw for this job it got the job done with it was really slow to cut and you just I just got the blade like doing I think this is the right tool for the job it's a four inch blade it'll cut right through this stud it cuts up to two inches deep and then my studs only an inch and a half thick so it's nice and lightweight and can't wait to try it out I've got my board set up here using my step ladders makeshift sawhorse setting the other end on my table there go ahead and give this a try [Music] it's working a lot better than a jigsaw suddenly a 5 amp motor so it feels a little underpowered for this they do self bigger motors on these about the cheapest one there was I think this one was about $40 it's gonna be just fine I'm not gonna use it everyday I'm gonna use it once in a while and so if it doesn't hold up in the long run I'm only out 40 bucks all right I've got this board ripped and it's basically a big long wedge I placed it into position it's running from one end of the floor to the other following along that screw line that I put down you'll see there as I lay the level on top it's perfectly level so I'm really happy with the way this one looks now it's time to go ahead and screw it down so I've got this into position I'm going to just use the same screws that I used to level with and remove those out of the floor [Music] now I'm gonna slide that board and Center it right on the line I marked with chalk earlier this line is basically four feet from the wall this will be the board that the two pieces of decking come together at position that onto the line and screw right down to the joist sim pack drills are wonderful for this I'm using really long screws for this I want them to go all the way through this board through the deck and into the joist I'm gonna put a screw at every single choice all right I've got it secured to the floor all the screws are in put a screw on every joist line and it's perfectly tied in this will then be our screwing strip for the for decking later double check it looks great perfectly level alright only about 10 15 more to go well I pretty much got this floor done I've got all the boards laid out now on the every fourth board you're going to want to space those about forty seven and a half inches the sheet of decking is 48 inches including the tongue so the seams actually gonna be at forty seven and a half inches so you want that spacer right on that joint otherwise I've got them tapered off I didn't really need to extend them all the way to the other wall as it leveled out about 3/4 of the way across the room the one corner is slightly high I'm not going to lower the floor but I'm not trying to get it absolutely perfectly level just close I mean I've got over an inch and a half of fall over here in the corner and maybe about a quarter inch of rise in the other corner now that these ribs are laid out the sleepers are in place at this point you can put a level pretty much anywhere on the floor and you get a level reading and that's the idea that's the goal next step is to lay that decking on top of it screw it down have a nice level floor as always thanks for watching and don't forget to subscribe to my channel see [Music]

Channel: Rundown Reborn

Views: 141,241

Rating: 4.8295083 out of 5

Keywords: how to level an old wood floor, level an old wood floor, leveling an old floor, leveling an uneven wood floor, Leveling wood floors, leveling floor, unlevel floor repair, how to level floors, unlevel floors in old house, fixing uneven floors, how to level a floor, level a floor in an old house, Uneven Floor, Fixing a floor, rundown reborn, Level Floor, subfloor leveling, fixing uneven floor joists, how to level floor joists, sagging floor repair, sagging floors, wood Floor

Id: 00R6bZKAvek

Length: 16min 30sec (990 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 06 2020