Correcting misaligned adjoining floors

[JontyG]

Firstly, I appologise for the barrage of posts - I have tried to search, but haven’t managed to find the answers I desire. Either my search skills are extremely poor, or I don’t know the right jargon to get decent results.

Anyway, I have decided that I’m going to pull up my existing Baltic Pine floorboards (150 x 22 or 25), and lay my new Karri boards (80 x 19) in their place.

The problem is that the existing floorboards already sit about 5mm lower than the adjoining tiled floors in the kitchen and bathroom, which means once the floorboards are replaced this difference is going to be fairly severe.

The simplest solution I can think of is to lay the Karri over a PB or ply underlay.

Is there a better/cheaper alternative to this? The area to be covered is approx 120sqm covering both levels of a double storey house.

Thanks,
Jonty :2tsup:

[TermiMonster]

You could always get the correct thickness ply and rip it down to joist width strips and pack the whole lot, but full sheet ply would give a better job.
TM

[Tools]

Just use masonite packing strips on each joist.

Tools

[Dirty Doogie]

Another alternative is to simply install an aluminium ramping piece between the 2 floor levels. Ramping section is designed to bridge different floor heights and you can find it in the tile section of Bunnings - or of course tile shops.

[JontyG]

Thanks for the replies thus far.

TM & Tools: This sounds like a good idea, obviously a lot cheaper than installing 120sqm of ply. I imagine the masonite or ply packing should be glued and nailed/screwed to the joists, that right?

I was tending towards a red tongue (22mm) underlay accross the whole floor, which I figured would provide a very solid subfloor, albeit an expensive one. I also thought this method may provide a bit of accoustic insulation for the upper storey and some thermal insulation for the ground floor, but i'm probably fooling myself in this regard.

DD: I have contemplated some sort of quad or ramping, but I think it'll look more finished if I can match the levels up properly, also, I curretly have pretty big gaps between the doors and the floors, and the lower floor level will really accentuate this gap, which I'm trying to avoid (sorry, didn't mention the door gaps in the original post).

Cheers,
Jonty

[OBBob]

I was tending towards a red tongue (22mm) underlay accross the whole floor, which I figured would provide a very solid subfloor, albeit an expensive one. I also thought this method may provide a bit of accoustic insulation for the upper storey and some thermal insulation for the ground floor, but i'm probably fooling myself in this regard.



Certainly helps with thermal ... not sure about noise.