Sloping or even sagging floors as well as cracks around windows and door frames can be signs of issues. Property consultants CJ Bloor suggest that if the cracks are fine and the gaps less than 5mm, this can be a normal settlement that occurs after a build. It could, however, be a sign of something a little more serious if cracks continue to widen over time, or doors begin to stick. One might be able to keep at bay the visions of catastrophe by considering the timeline of such occurrences. ‘Slight settlement occurring over, say, thirty years is quite different from the same thing happening in a very short period of time,’ says Paul.
But if there is cause for concern, it is always best to get a professional opinion. ‘If you’ve got something that is noticeable underfoot, and it’s a struggle walking around the place, which is it sometimes, then it’s definitely worth getting someone to look,’ he says. A consultation with a structural engineer or a surveyor costs on average roughly £1000 and they can be called in whether you’re about to purchase a property, have just moved in, or have been living there for years.
House & Garden previously featured the Georgian townhouse of Kerem Ozelli which he had bought as a wreck. There were rooms where the elevation variance between the floor and the ceiling was as much as 17 centimetres. He ended up calling in architects and designers Michaelis Boyd who helped him rejigg the floors in five rooms, but the formerly wonky frame of the house is reflected in the slightly warped doors, a charming nod to time’s effect on the property, while the home itself is a little more practical for modern living.
For David, conversations about whether or not to fix sloping floors come up often. Floor shims, for example, can be laid over subfloors or uneven joists before new flooring is built on top, to help level everything out. His advice, however, is to accept it. ‘Learn to live with it, it’s part of the character of the property that you’ve got,’ he suggests. ‘It’ll almost invariably cause more issues if you try to straighten things out. Just go with it.’
By more issues, he means the chain reaction of adjustments that may come as a result of well-meaning intentions to fix the floors. ‘There’s a knock-on effect of playing around with floor levels.’ he warns. ‘It’ll start to affect doors, you’ll have to undercut doors so they can open over the top of inserted floors so overall it probably causes more problems that it solves.’
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