Different kinds of old floors in open plan-How to level them

[tigerbutchicken]

Hello to every one...i am new here...i have been reading a lot of the previous post/topics/forums...and i was wondering if you can help me with my "problem"...i will be really thankful!
We just bought a "reposesion" house...it's more kind of a "project", the previous owners were kind of hard with it...
The ground floor has an open floor plan (living room - dining room - kitchen)...the previous owners didn't finish it...so, now we have this "big-one-room" where we would want to install only one type of floor (ex: vynil planks or laminate) BUT the 3 "previous" rooms has different kinds of floors:
- the living room: wood floors.
- where the wall used to be: bricks.
- dining room (very very very uneven): some parts old vynil tiles, some parts cement, some parts bricks.
- kitchen: cement floor.
also, the kitchen floor and the dinning room floor are like 1.5 cms higher than the living room floor.
so:
1.- it's possible to level these 3 floors in an only one even surface?
2.- how we do it? how can we level all this 3 floors? have we have to do it in stages (first, each room individually and then a second one for the 3 rooms as a whole)? which is the best way to do it without loosing money and time?
3.- do you think the best alternative for flooring all this open-floor-plan is vynil planks? would your recommend another one? why?
again, i will be very thankful about any kind of help!!!
Erika

 

[crazydaze]

Your best bet will be to get some proffesionals in to have a proper look, you need to ascertain which floor is highest, which is lowest, and what is in-between.

Then you need to ignore what floorcoverings are on some floors and look at what is actually underneath.

Then you need to understand wether the floors have a DPM installed under them or not. If not, this will be a further consideration.

Building the levels up will likely require screeding and/or DPM of the concrete areas, ply or hardboard could be used on floors that have floorboards if required.

Alternatively it may be possible to batten out the whole floor but this will add alot of height to the subfloors.

Whatever floor you decide to fit ontop in this area does'nt matter a whole deal at this stage, correctly rectified, levelling of the built up floor will be the major task. It is however veruy important to understand the DPM situation as this would have an effect on the wallet if not sorted at an early stage as it will be more expensive to sort later in the project.

 

[dazlight]

If you can get away the height then 18mm plywood on top of the floorboards.

Or as I did on a job to get the height up 12mm ply then 6mm.

Then its a matter of getting the concrete areas to the same height as the plywood using levelling / smoothing screeds and maybe liquid dpm if needed.

Like Dave said very important a moisture test is carried out.

 

[tigerbutchicken]

Thank you so much for your replies...have been really helpful to understand the situation of the floors and what we can do...
We are going to meet a builder tomorrow to see what he thinks about it...[/b]