# Forum Home Renovation Flooring  Lowering a floor - is it possible?

## thepurplebullet

Hi everyone, I have been a loiterer over two small past renos. Thank you all for your incredible expertise - this is an amazing forum. This is my first post with a slightly bizarre question. 
We are in the planning stages of a reno for our 1970's home, basically opening up a couple of walls to make an open plan living area. Also, one corner of the current kitchen is subsiding noticably so we will be doing some sub-floor repairs. Since this will be our main room we want to make it really nice (everything is pretty tired now - not that I don't love cork and copper) and are wondering if it is possible to lower our floor (bearers and all) to make the room have a 2.7m ceiling height rather than 2.4m. The house is on stumps and has plenty of sub-floor clearance since we are at the back of a sloping block. 
Has anyone got any experience with lowering a timber floor? I have never come across it but think that surely it must be possible.

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## Craigoss

I re-leveled all my floors in my place which involved lowering some rooms by 50mm. Lucky my floors are non load bearing (all walls are brick and go straight to the ground i.e brick footings), they just sit on stumps. I got 4 bottle jacks, lifted the floor, removed several bricks from the stumps, releveled and lowered the floor. 
How is your floor structured, do the walls sit on the floor etc?

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## thepurplebullet

Thanks Craigoss - you make it sound so simple!  
Unfortunately the length of the room does have a load-bearing stud wall. Additionally, the subfloor is actually a bit of a mess since the current family room was extended so there is a combination of studs and strip footings supporting the floor and a combination of floorboards and particle board under the cork floor. 
I guess my thinking has been that maybe the existing flooring would need to be pulled up. Then, the joists could be sawed off flush with the load bearing wall (obviously leaving the bearer in place). Then, saw off stumps and footings to get the new lower level and rebuild a new floor tied to the existing structure somehow. I suspect some additional stumps would be needed too. 
Apart from the expense, I am wondering if there would be a problem with load-bearing wall needing some lateral support with the joists sawn off - it seems to me that a stud wall on bits of joist on a bearer might not be that stable.  
Obviously I would need an engineer to sort all this out but we're still trying to work out whether it is feasible. Craigoss you are legend for even making it sound possible.

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