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We bought a 55 year old house in an older part of town known for soft soils. Many houses in the area have harline cracks (both my neighbors have them around the same distance from the street, it almost looks like the house is slightly tipping). We also live in Canada with heavy snowfall and significant freeze/thaw cycles.

The inspector saw two vertical cracks in the foundation and the previous owner had them filled. He did say to keep an eye on it, but it's a hot market and we figured nothing looked alarming. No interior cracks, the walls are straight and the boiler room looks pretty good. Our realtor, who saw sketchy stuff in other houses, thought everything looked good for the area. The basement and garage are entirely finished, so drywall almost everything.

We've been doing a lot of renos (kitchen, floors, new closets) for the last 6 weeks and had a structural engineer come for sag in the kitchen ceiling. He said no hidden defect, the house is just old and not built to today's standard and it should be expected, also mentioned that poor snow clearing on the roof for a few winters could have caused this. We had the ceiling leveled and they also poured leveling concrete on the kitchen floor, but again, the contractor said that it was common practice in our area. I took out my big level and the basement floors are sloping towards the sides of the house, around 1 to 1 1/2 inch. The upstairs bedroom I'm sitting in also slopes around 1" towards the front of the house.

We're getting an experienced GC to come take a look, any other things we could do in the meantime?

Thanks!

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Floors in old houses slope.

It's normal. Indeed, you were already told that it should be expected by an engineer, who does not appear to have told you to panic about it.

If you want to waste a pile of money on making them not slope, it's your money, have fun.

Normal people live with it unless the house is in danger of actually falling down. A mere inch to inch and a half across a room is trivial.

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    Nothing in a house remains plumb, level or square past a few decades. If there is significant subsidence, you want to do the work necessary to stop that. It it's not getting worse, up to you how much work you want to do to try to undo it (can be a major hassle), hide it (shim furniture to level or install level platform/false floors), or live with it. One corner of my 125-year-old house is several inches higher than the rest; I've just leveled the furniture which really cares about this and called the remaining slope a cat toy.
    – keshlam
    Commented Jul 14 at 16:28
  • Thanks for the input. The engineer came in specifically for the ceiling, he didn't look at the whole house, but you're right that he probably would have pointed it out. I guess I want to make sure my house falls in the "live with it" category.
    – David Jean-Allard
    Commented Jul 15 at 10:22

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