Had a job in a 1920s apartment building in St. Louis where the floor was so out of level it changed how I prep for everything now.

3 comments

3 Comments

My buddy Mike did a kitchen remodel in an old Philly row house. He swore the floor had a two inch slope corner to corner. Every cabinet had to be shimmed like crazy, and the fridge looked drunk when they first rolled it in. He said he triple checks for level on every single job now, even new construction. That kind of thing gets in your head for good.

jade7382mo agoTop Commenter

Actually, my uncle did a whole addition on a 1920s bungalow and just worked with the slope. He said chasing perfect level in an old house is a fool's errand and you lose the charm. Sometimes you just follow the floor and let the trim hide it. I get why Mike checks everything now, but that kind of fear can make a project take twice as long. A two inch slope over a whole kitchen is just part of the story in those Philly row houses, blairj55.

the_elliot1mo ago

Read an article once from a preservation group that said a lot of those old houses were built with a slight slope on purpose, something about water runoff and the foundation settling evenly over time. So trying to make everything perfectly level can actually cause more problems, like cracking the plaster or messing up the way the house breathes. Your uncle gets it, you just work with what you got and let the trim do the heavy lifting visually. Mike's fear is real though, once you see one floor that bad it stays in your head. But man, a two inch slope in a kitchen is practically a feature in those row houses, not a bug. Just shim the fridge and call it character.