Help, serious first time buyer anxiety

Hayley20013

We’ve rented a house for 8 years, never noticed anything wrong with it in that time apart from the boiler needed replacing. We have since bought the house this year. I had new carpets laid today, and there is a dip about 1cm where the floor doesn’t meet the skirting board. Ive been googling and have now driven myself sick with worry, we have no money left after buying the house and I’m concerned we are going to have to pay a lot of money if something is seriously wrong. The house is around 60 years old. Does this sound like something serious or is it normal for a house of this age? The rest of the house is fine with flat floors it’s just in one bedroom upstairs.

diggingdude

what type of survey did you have? Nothing to say there is a major problem which has to be fixed straight away

need_an_answer

If you can post a picture it may help..I appreciate you are a new user so you may need to put some spaces in the link,but hopefully someone can advise you.
After living there 8 years I assume you know the house well and have got used to its quirks...could this just be a case of the carpet you have just had laid is of a different thickness to what was taken up or that the underlay has been replaced for different making a gap more visible?

It could be that you have one floorboard that's become dislodged...that's not a major thing ….

could be lots of reasons but if the floor feels stable then I wouldn't expect there to be too much to worry about. Sometimes fitting carpets does change the appearance of a room and it just takes a little getting used to the new look.

sammyjammy

There is supposed to be a gap between the floor and the skirting board, as said above maybe your new carpet isn't as high as the other one...

Hayley20013

Sorry I should have explained better, you can’t see the gap with the new carpet down. You can only see it when there was no carpet so it’s really not that big, but now I know it’s there I can feel the slope when I walk in that area. I’ve put a toy box over it to try and forget about it :rotfl: It’s not the whole way around just a small area on one side of the room

opteron

As the house is around 60 years old, you definitely need to do a home buyer survey.

- If the home buyer survey reveals minor issues, you can ask the vendor to lower the price a bit. Roughly the amount of money it needs to get them fixed.
- If the home buyer survey reveals major issues such that a full structural survey is needed to further investigate, you'd better stay away from this property..

princeofpounds

Some reassurance - slightly sagging floors are very common and not normally a problem. If there is a serious problem, your insurance would probably cover it. No need for panic.

How old is the property?

Is the floor made of wooden floorboards resting on wooden joists?

Is this upstairs or ground floor?

Is this under an interior or exterior wall?

Were there any indications of significant past water damage?

Is there any reason to think the sagging is getting any worse with time?

Did you have a survey done?

The fact is, wood warps. Houses always move and settle a bit over time, which is not subsidence. Construction can be imprecise; in many circumstances a centimetre is not a big deal. It’s very, very common to not have totally flat floors, especially in older properties. But I don’t want to dismiss it totally because I can think of situations where it might indicate a problem, they just are much less likely.

princeofpounds

opteron wrote: »

As the house is around 60 years old, you definitely need to do a home buyer survey.

It’s already been bought.

buglawton

60 years ago they were building some quiet good houses, building standards were higher then than now.

HampshireH

opteron wrote: »

As the house is around 60 years old, you definitely need to do a home buyer survey.

- If the home buyer survey reveals minor issues, you can ask the vendor to lower the price a bit. Roughly the amount of money it needs to get them fixed.
- If the home buyer survey reveals major issues such that a full structural survey is needed to further investigate, you'd better stay away from this property..

Not a helpful response at all.

OP. Doesnt sound from your description like a problem at all. As you say it's not visible with the carpet down and its a small area of the floor in 1 room easily hidden

This wouldn't suggest a major issue to me. If you said the whole side of the house had a gap and uneven floors Id be more worried. You may just have a misplaced board or settlement which could also be 60 years old.

Without sounding rude. If its less than a cm and affecting such a small area you won't feel it when your walking around the room.

PasturesNew

If you're saying the floor's sunk .... then it might not be as bad as it sounds.

If it's, say, rotten joists, then a good carpenter could whip up the floorboards, cut out the rotten bits and replace with new, pop the boards down again - and all in a morning's work or so.

Put a shout out on a local Facebook group asking for recommendations to check out the problem, with a photo of what they'd be looking to fix. Get some little men round to give you a price.

It might only cost you £100-200 for work to be done, or all the little men might say "Oh that's nothing at all... nothing wrong with that"