What is the sound of one floorboard creaking?

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leavings

leavings

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Really it's every floorboard creaking.

I don't have delusions of being a pro, but I think with the amount of time I can commit to my recordings and the money I have invested in some decent equipment, I should be able to produce some good tracks.

The problem, you see, is that my parents...well...they're not small people. I live in the basement, and they sure do love to walk back and forth and back and forth and back and forth above me. All day and all night. It's so fucking loud I can't sleep, much less record without the mics picking it up. Every time they take a step, it sounds like robots are screaming in my brain.

So, you studio builders. How do I fix a creaky floor? I've lived with this for years, but now I'm finally inspired to do something about it for the sake of music. That and my girlfriend hates sleeping here because of the absurd noise from above.

HELP!!!

Peter
 
Floor creaking is caused by floorboards warping due to humidity changes, and heavy use among other things. Typically what happens is the floorboards pull "up" from the joists below just a hair, and when they are stepped on, the creaking noise is generated from the floorboards flexing and/or rubbing on the boards next to it.

The way to fix this is to shim the loose boards, a very easy thing to do. You go to your home depot, lowes, or hardware store, and buy wooden shims. They come in packs of 12 or 20, something like that, and are 1" wide by about 4" long, and are thin at one end (1/16") and thicker at the other (1/8"), like a slim wedge.

How you shim your floor is easy, you push the shims, thin end first, between the loose floorboards and the joists, then either a nail from floorboard side (living room, etc) down OR you can apply carpenter's glue to both sides of the shim, and tap it in with a small hammer. TAP, not BASH. You don't want to put them in further than you need to, because you'll wedge other boards so hard they'll pull up down the road. Snug is good.

Before I refinished the hardwoods on the first floor of our house, I shimmed it, and it took about 6 hours to do 1400 sq ft worth of hardwood floors. While that sounds like a lot, the basement had suspended ceilings, there was plumbing and electrical in the way, unpacked boxes in the basement from when we moved here, etc.

If everything is open it goes MUCH quicker.
 
Talcum powder. If the joints between boards and joists are visible above or below, simply spray talcum powder into the loose joints. Pour talcum powder into one of those plastic bottles like the blue powder to fill a chalkline tool. Squeeze the bottle gently as talcum is very fine. Even holding the bottle vertically with the nozzle pointed up. If the joints are really bad, then do as frederic says. That does nothing for pulling the boards down tight though. Only raises the boards to the nail head. I've gone so far as to screw 2x2 cleats to the joists, 1/8" below the boards(from underneith) and then use screws to "pull" the sub-floor boards back down to the joists. First off, what type of flooring is it? The norm is 2x6 sub-flooring with a layer of finish flooring over that, which could be any number of things, usually 3/4 x 2 1/4 or 3 1/2" oak, maple, mahogany or other wood strip tongue and groove boards. These are nailed to the sub floor in the T&G. If the joints are visible from above, try the talcum powder first. If there is carpeting or linoleum, then do it from below. If you can do neither, then your up shit creek:eek: Use the noise as effects. Ha!

fitZ:D
 
This all sounds like great advice, but a carpenter I am not, so could someone clarify a few terms for me before I end up putting a joist where it doesn't belong?

I'll tell you what I see: I went upstairs and measured the flooring, the thing you actually walk on, and it's made of relatively long, narrow slats of wood (what kind I don't know). They're 2.25" x 31.5". I have an unfinished ceiling in my room, so when I look up I see large, beam type pieces of wood running across the entire width of the room, spaced about 1 and a half feet apart. There are also little cross beams running between them in some places. Then, above that, I see diagonal running pieces of wood, 6 inches wide and I can't tell how long. Honestly, I looked and couldn't find the end of a single piece, which leads me to believe that they end and begin on top of those aforementioned cross beams. Some of these boards have a little crack between them, and I can see that there is something there which is not the wood panel of the floor above. So, there's something between them, but I don't know what it is.

Now, can anyone tell me what those myriad layers are with respect to what frederic and rick said? I need to know where I should and should not be sticking my shim? Because I don't just stick my shim anywhere, you know.

Thanks, Peter
 
The huge beams that go the width of the basement room are the floor joists.

The little cross pieces between them for our discussion are irrelevent.

The "wood" you see above the floor joists, is the subfloor. On top of that are your tongue and groove hardwood floors that you stand on, in the living room.

The shims go between the joists, and the subfloor.
 
as an atlternative to Rick's talcum powder you could use graphite.

cheers
john
 
I tried the shims and they seem to be working. It's mildly distressing that I've endured this racket for the 12 or so years that I've lived in this room, when the solution was so simple.

Anyways, I only bought a twelve pack because I wanted to test them out, but as I said they seem to be effective under the two joists I shimmed. I'll get the rest tomorrow.

Thanks for the help!
 
leavings said:
I tried the shims and they seem to be working. It's mildly distressing that I've endured this racket for the 12 or so years that I've lived in this room, when the solution was so simple.

Anyways, I only bought a twelve pack because I wanted to test them out, but as I said they seem to be effective under the two joists I shimmed. I'll get the rest tomorrow.

Thanks for the help!
Click to expand...

Glad it worked out for ya. And don't worry about the suffering... things like that often seem disasterous to fix until you know how. Been through this a few times with different houses, and like you, the first place I suffered for many years before I finally got some good advice on how to fix it.

In fact, the kitchen in my first apartment's floor was so poor it would creak when my cat walked through the room.
 
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