Hump through the doorway

12 years ago

We're installing a solid woven bamboo floor in the kitchen/dining room, adjoining hallways, and living room of our 1972 house on a subfloor. We removed engineered wood floors from the kitchen/dining area and hallways. The living room has had carpet for the last 35 years.

The problem is that as we came to the open doorway between the dining room and the living room, we realized there is a hump in the floor as you pass from one room to the other. Checking the hall floor on the same line, there is also a hump there.

Dining room transition to living room (that's a piece of the bamboo):

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Hallway along the same line:

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The gap you see is 3/8" at most.

This hallway had wood flooring until last week and we never noticed this hump before. Of course, the guy who installed that floor used monster staples and bamboo requires delicate 1-1/4" brad nails.

We're wondering if we scrape away the vinyl, maybe 8" on either side of the hump, and even plane away a bit of the underlying plywood, if we could reduce the the hump sufficiently. Is this even a good idea? Is there a better method?

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Comments (8)

brickeyee
12 years ago
What structure is under the hump?

A beam maybe?
bsspewer
12 years ago
You could always build up the floor before & after the hump. Using thin pieces of plywood or some kind of under layer.

Maybe just scrape away the vinyl from where the hump is, but leave it in place before/after to give that gradual shimmed transition to the hump.
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suzanne_sl
Original Author
12 years ago
Yes, a beam.
suzanne_sl
Original Author
12 years ago
We'll give it a try. Thanks.
glennsfc
12 years ago
When we sought to reduce these "humps'...what we did was a combination of reducing the crown by excavating it down and gradually building up the slopes on either side. As the previous poster suggests, we used thin plywood and other materials to do that.
floorguy
12 years ago
If it was wood before...

You are making the big mistake many make, when checking for 3/16 in 10 feet Teeter totter on the crown, then measure.

You may find you're barely out and the reason you never noticed.

No, you are not going to use 1-1/4 brad nails!!!! Unless you want a very squeaky, creaky and loose floor. If it doesn't fold the brad nail. Strand is hard stuff.

You are either going to glue it down(which may be the only option), or you are going to use 1-1/4 to 1-1/2, 18 gauge cleats, and watch for fastener pimple, because it is so dense.
woodfloorpro
12 years ago
Your on vinyl meaning you have a 1/4" underlayment on top of the sub floor you can sand down without doing anything to the structure. That looks to me to you may need no more than that to be within tolerance.
suzanne_sl
Original Author
12 years ago
Thanks all. We've been sidetracked for the moment by the discovery of termites in the baseboard on one wall of the living room. Termites are a fact of life in So. CA, but this was a bit of a surprise as we get inspected every year and missed these. In our defense, we have a fireplace and a toy box on that wall, plus the corner has been hidden behind a treadmill for a while. We took the opportunity to pull out the old hearth seating and brick facing around the fireplace and found termite nirvana in the beam over the fireplace too. Yuck. So the flooring was delayed for a bit while we took care of the termites, but we'll be able to resume this week. I'm looking forward to having a complete floor once again.