When You Have a Crooked House
Straightening Slants Is Possible With or Without Renovation

By Kristen Fletcher
Special to The Washington Post
Saturday, May 10, 2008

In the nursery rhyme, the crooked man with his crooked cat and mouse didn't mind his crooked house. But outside of children's stories, homes are supposed to have level floors, flat walls and plumb ceilings, so crookedness can be a bit more problematic.

As structures age, they often shift or settle. That shows up as a dip in the floor, a sag in a window casing, a slope in a ceiling or cracks in a wall. It can be so subtle that a homeowner will notice only a wobble in a table, or dramatic enough that the floor level changes by several inches from one end of the house to the other.

Because cabinets and window treatments, doors and sofas are constructed to work with flat surfaces, a home with slants and slopes can be a challenge for the people who live in it. "When you're out of level, you're always chasing the problem somewhere," said Chris Landis, an architect and principal of Landis Construction, a District design-build firm that frequently works in older homes. "If you level the floor, you may have an issue with the doorways. When you put in your cabinet, you'll notice the crookedness of the windowsill."

Landis said the key to dealing with a home that has settled is to come to terms with how much slant you are willing to live with. If the answer is little to none, renovations, possibly major, can level out-of-plumb surfaces. If the answer is some, there are ways to camouflage a home's imperfections. The final option, of course, is to simply embrace the slanty quirks of an older home. The choice will depend on both budget and aesthetics.

Kelly and Paul Sherman of Capitol Hill chose to renovate. The extensive work on their 100-year-old house allowed them to address some of its sloping floors and ceilings and provided a solution to their more pressing need for a family-friendly layout.

"We wanted more living space," said Kelly, who works for the Environmental Protection Agency. They also wanted access to their basement from inside the house. The basement had been a rental unit, but Paul, editor and publisher of Potomac Tech Wire, uses it for his office and had grown tired of walking outside to get there.

Architect and fellow Capitol Hill resident Stephen Lawlor of Lawlor Architects in the District crafted a plan to add to the back and upper stories of the house. That created a layout Lawlor called "much more appropriate to family life." He also found solutions to the home's slants and slopes while maintaining its historic feel.

Lawlor said a bearing wall had settled, causing a slope in the ceiling of the first level and the floor of the second. The Shermans' house, like many in this area's oldest neighborhoods, was built without the footings that typically form the base of a building's foundation. Lawlor said this lack of footings, or inadequate footings, are among the major reasons that homes settle.

Another cause is that older homes may have undersize joists, the wooden supports underneath a floor. Over time, the joists succumb to gravity or are undermined by water or insect damage. Problems worsen when homeowners build additions without adding the proper reinforcements or when the heavy appliances and materials used in modern homes tax the structure.

In addition, Landis said, many homes are built on landfill that is not compacted, so the fill compacts over time and the structure settles.

The first step Lawlor took when working with the Shermans was to assess the structural soundness of their home, something architects and contractors say is crucial before undertaking any project or if a homeowner is seeing changes. A door that no longer closes, wall cracks that are growing wider or a fixture tilting more over time can be signs of trouble. They should be evaluated by an architect or contractor experienced with older homes.

Beginning with the dirt foundation in the basement, every floor in the Shermans' house was replaced, which allowed the contractors to level the joists on the upper levels and even out the floors. "One way to look at old houses in a new way is to start with the floor," Lawlor said. In the Shermans' case, he said, the new bamboo floors throughout give a unifying feel.

Lawlor found an innovative solution to the sloping ceiling by adding a dropped wood ceiling with recessed lighting where the original house meets the addition. "Dropping the ceiling was a way to manipulate the ceiling line, join the new with the old and conceal the leveling we did," Lawlor said. "The eye sees that rather than the different levels."

The architect also added a horizontal trim line, called a datum, three-quarters of the way up the living room wall. "It has the effect of bringing the scale of the room down," he said.

And by lining up the datum with another architectural element in the room, such as the top of the doorways or window casings, the technique can draw the eye to a straight line and away from an out-of-whack one at the ceiling.

The home still feels like an older one, just modernized, what Lawlor called the best of both worlds. For a more "machine-done" feel in an older home, he said, significant leveling is often needed. It can include taking out the stairs, leveling all the floors and lowering the ceiling. The right choice for any given homeowner is highly subjective, he said.

For homeowners without the budget or the desire for far-reaching renovations, much can be done to diminish the appearance of tilts and dips in walls, ceilings and floors. "It's like choosing clothes," said interior designer Nan Knisley of Nan Knisley Designs in Alexandria. "You emphasize the positive and deemphasize the negative."

Paint choice is especially important in an older home. "The simplest thing is to be careful about the sheen of the paint," Knisley said. "A high-gloss finish is going to show everything, draw the eye to imperfections."

Teresa Buchanan of Designline in Annapolis also cautioned that bold color combinations are unforgiving to lines that aren't crisp. "The more pronounced the problem, the more uniform the paint colors and finishes should be," she said. "The objective is to minimize the visual contrast between the wall and ceiling line and millwork -- any point where the lines intersect."

The thoughtful placement of rugs and artwork, the right window treatments and the use of softer lamplight as opposed to harsh overhead fixtures can also go a long way in concealing imperfections.

Homeowners with out-of-plumb surfaces will often encounter the most trouble, however, when they try to add a built-in element such as a bookcase or cabinetry. When something vertical comes up to meet the ceiling or a windowsill, an uneven surface is going to show itself.

But it's not hopeless. Gregory Hrones, owner of General Repair Services, a Beltsville contractor, stressed that a skilled installer can adjust toe kicks, the platforms that cabinets sit on, to work with an uneven floor and can adjust the moldings at the top of a cabinet or bookcase to make it flush against the ceiling. On the high end, custom pieces can be built to work within a specific space. Hrones's company crafts doors and cabinets to fit an individual home, taking all the slopes and slants into consideration.

When working with older homes, Landis always returns to the importance of determining the owner's vision for the home and talking about what can realistically be achieved. "It's all about establishing an understanding early on about how we can minimize these problems and manage customer expectations," he said.

Simply stated, a house with some years on it is never going to look perfect. "If you've chosen to live in an old house," Knisley said, "the quirks are part of the charm and character."

Irene Mayer, who oversees renovations, contractors and related work for the historic Tabard Inn near Dupont Circle, could not agree more. "This is the way nature is," Mayer said. "I like to live with the warts and the problems."

Mayer has worked at the 40-room inn for 25 years and said there is no need to fight its "historic bones" or out-of-plumb staircases and surfaces. The rooms are painted in deep reds, blues, yellows and greens, often with contrasting ceiling and trim colors that show each dip and slant.

"That's part of the charm," Mayer said. "Everything exactly perfect is sort of boring. It's a bit like having your face lifted until your kneecaps are up around your ears. Does that make you more attractive?"

The inn's three buildings, built between 1890 and 1910, have been updated through the years to upgrade the bathrooms and give things a more "today feel," but Mayer said the look is decidedly more grandma's house than boutique hotel. "If you have a hole in your roof, you fix it," she said. "If you have a stable wall that's a little lower on one end than the other, you live with it."