More than just uneven floors for a laminate installation

I am looking to install a laminate floor in my kitchen. The problem is my is 100 years old and the floors are not level. Everything in the house has been built to accomodate for this, cabinets etc. I don't see how that should trouble the installation. WHat does trouble me is an addition that was put on the kitchen later. There is a part of the L-shaped kitchen that was added on and the joint in the floor where the two structures were put together is a tad higher than both sides of it. It's almost like the floors settled, but this monster beam and joist situation didn't. Is there some sort of molding for this problem? Or am I stuck forever with crappy linoleum?

 

Level is nice... but not necessary for a laminate floor. Flat is necessary! Secondly a "transition" between rooms or in a doorway or arch is not uncommon. How wide is the area to be transitioned. An example might be the transition from carpet to tile, a 1" molding would hide the joint. How wide must the molding be to hide the change in elevation between the original floor and the floor of the addition? What is the subfloor material and what is under the sub floor? Concrete, crawl space, basement??? What moisture issues might oen expect in your location? Please comment on the possibility of putting down a 3/4" plywood or OSB deck on both sides of the high "spot". How wide is the high area?

 

The room is 12' wide and the transition is 7'wide. The subfloor is wooden planks and there is a basement beneath the original kitchen structure and a crawlspace beneath the small section past the transition. Right now the flooring is "peel and stick" tiles over those really groovy asbestos tiles.

 

Two key issues are:Is a new (additional) subfloor practical? and how wide, or how large, is the area that is over the "monster beam", and how much higher is the floor at that point. I need a verbal picture of the problem to comment further. You will also have another, yet easy challange where the crawl space is concerned, and we can deal with that after the transition issue is resolved. Are you sure that there are asbestos tiles in use?

 

The kitchen is almost a square measuring 12'by 13'. The addition part is about 5' by 6'. The rest of the addition that makes the remainder of the 12' is a small bathroom (which I am not flooring at this moment, and is thus not at issue here). So, imagine a large (almost) square with another small (almost)square abutted to it. This abuttment joint contains the peak in the floor. I held a level over the joint and the big square of kitchenn slants down about 3/4 of an inch and the small square slants away from the joint about 1/4 of an inch. The small square is just a tad under level and the big square is quite slanted. Would laying plywood mean essentially a brand new subfloor? Would kitchen cabinets have to come out? The tiles are those really groovy red with fake marble swirls over them. They are harder than linoleum type floor. I would imagine that they are from the 50's. Do I just rip those babies up or do I need some sort of demo pro? Also, would planing down the beam (joist) be an alternative? It's quite large, looking at it from the basement.

 

It seems that the asbestos may be your larger problem. As I stated Level isn't that important. Flatness Is. How wide is the "abutment peak" as you call it and is it flat in itself, or is it peaked as well? If you have two flat areas a transition between the two areas can be applied. The width of the transition is the concern. Bathrooms and the color of tile is meaningless. An understanding of the transition between the "rooms" or the original room and the add on are all that are important at the moment. Assuming each floor is FLAT.