LESLIE: Lena in Missouri is on the line with an old home with uneven floors. Tell us what’s going on at your money pit.
LENA: Hi. My money pit, it’s a 120-year-old Victorian home, one story.
TOM: OK.
LENA: And the floors are terribly slanted.
TOM: Right.
LENA: And I would dearly love to know how to fix that problem.
TOM: Well, Lena, by the time you get to be 120 years old, you’re going to be slanted and uneven, as well, OK?
LENA: I imagine I will.
TOM: I wouldn’t worry too much about it. That’s sort of natural for an older house for lots of reasons. And you can’t really straighten it out, so to speak, because if you do, you’ll end up causing more damage than it’s worth. It takes a lot of years for it to get into that condition. If you try to, say, level a floor that’s sloped, you may stretch a wire or break a pipe or something like that. So I would not try to fix that; I would work around it.
Now, if you had one room, like a kitchen or something, and you really wanted it to be a lot less sloped than it was, then I would float that with a leveling compound – a floor-leveling compound – and bring it up that way. But I would not get involved with jacking up things or anything of that nature, OK?
LENA: OK, OK.
TOM: Consider it charm, Lena. Consider it charm.
LENA: Thank you. Thank you.
TOM: Alright. Good luck with that project. Thanks so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT.
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