My sunken living room floor is concrete slab surrounded on two sides by higher concrete slabs at the level of the rest of the house. The other wall is a brick fireplace hearth. The wall opposite that is a sheetrock exterior wall. It is an area about 13' x 10' which is much too small for a "sunken" anything in my book and is just a hazard for an old woman (me) to fall into. One of the concrete side walls is the entryway at the front door and is far too narrow as well. I want to raise this floor to the level of the rest of the house and I have ceramic tile to do throughout the house. This area is about 6 inches deep. What is the best and possibly cheapest way to fill this in and level it off?
Concrete – Filling in a sunken living room to level of other floors
concretefloorlevelingself-leveling-concrete
Best Answer
One way to raise the floor, and possibly the most reasonable cost wise, is to install what I would call sleeper joists sitting the top of the existing subfloor and than add new subfloor covering over those.
These "sleeper joists" would be installed as 2xX material on edge. This could be 2x6 planks spaced 16" apart. It may be necessary to rip the 2x6 planks to somewhat less than their native 5.5" width so that the subfloor and whatever flooring that you choose to put on top of that would match to the adjoining floor heights.