My current house is "reversed" as well. It's 3-stories/five levels to maximize the ocean views. First level is the foyer/garage, half-flight up is the master facing the ocean, half up from that are two guest rooms facing the street, half up is a story-and-half great room facing the ocean (over the master bedroom footprint). Half-flight up from that is the kitchen, dining room and library, all with ocean and street views. Every morning, looking at the sunrise and dolphins in the waves I know it's worth it to carry groceries all the way up!

Another important feature about placing machines on wooden floors is the joist system. If you have a machine sitting in the middle of a joist span it is prone to flexing, sort of like a trampoline. It is best to have machines at the end of a joist setup, at a load bearing wall. Then the machine is over the most stable part of the joist. The material you use to cover the floor is secondary. A machine shouldn't move, if it does its not balanced, or the floor system is moving.

Hu-183233286-- We had the floor leveled by Acousti-Level. We had to wait about three weeks to get the work done. On the day of the job they brought in 2 big trucks and about 4 men. They brought the wet leveling product up via a long hose through a window into our second floor condo. We left the condo at this point. They worked for about 8 hours we believe. We returned two days later. We walked around the condo and the floor looked beautiful. BUT, the floor WAS NOT level!! They overfilled where the floor was high and underfilled where the floor sank. I wanted to cry. After lots of calls, the owner's son came over and said the floor looked beautiful (it did) and said that my husband was being too nit-picky. The man literally said "We NEVER said it would be 'level.' We said it would be flat." (The business name is Acousti-"LEVEL.") We knew we would not be able to get laminate flooring with the dips and rises the floor had. (We used a level and found out the floor level varied everywhere.) My husband just kept telling the man "I want a LEVEL floor." The owner's son finally said he couldn't get anyone to come back and relevel it in the week my husband gave him to get it fixed. The general contractor that had bid $750. to do the floor (and we declined) offered to ask his tile man if he would relevel it. So my husband told the owner's son that we knew someone who could relevel it. The tile man bid $1750. and after a lot of haggling the owner's son gave us the go ahead to pay the tile man out of the money we were to pay him. The tile guy hand-leveled it and it is pretty level now. We believe something went wrong the first time. Either the crew that was sent was inexperienced or the mix they used was defective or not mixed right. A self-leveling material does not flow uphill. The tile man had to grind down as much concrete as he had to raise. My husband thinks possibly the first crew manually moved the leveling material around which raised some areas and left some sunken. I am glad that the entire floor is now covered with the leveling material. (Some type of gypcrete???) I am sad that after paying almost $7000. the floor was not done right the first time. It should have worked but something went wrong. If my husband had not been assertive and not continued to reply (like a broken record) "I want level floors" I don't think ANYTHING would have been done. Our floors were FINALLY leveled the second time about a week ago. We decided to not get laminate floors. We are getting Luxury Vinyl Planks instead. The flooring we originally wanted, both our first and second choices, were no longer in stock thanks to all of the delays. The flooring we did get is beautiful but doesn't match our other wood furniture. We couldn't find a good match. (Lots of shortages of everything due to the pandemic.) The smartest thing we did was to NOT pay the company ANYTHING until after they were done. I think that's why they allowed someone else to relevel the floor and be paid out of the money we owed the leveling company. Once the floors were level we paid both places. We did get three bids for the work which were pretty similar in cost but we went with the first company that could do the work. I think with hindsight I would ask for references FROM INDIVIDUAL CONDO OWNERS (not NEW builds) and then CALL THEM. You should definitely get a company's CCB # and look up their record with your states Construction Contractor's Board. Also you should look up the company with the Better Business Bureau. We had looked up the company we hired and they had a spotless CCB and BBB record so a spotless record doesn't mean they have always done a good job. We found three floor leveling companies and got three bids by googling "floor leveling companies in (your city or state.)" It was difficult to find companies and difficult to find people who had time to do the job. Two other companies we found (but did not use) were Ultra Quiet Floors, and Sound Floors. Four months later: Was it worth it? It would have been almost perfect if the first company had done a good job. Once the tile man leveled the floors, yes, it was worth it. The floors seem to be level and we are no longer (literally) tripping over them because of how uneven they are. They were AWEFUL. We are crossing our fingers that we can have our LVP flooring installed. The same GC that hired the tile man is also hiring the crew to lay the floor and if it isn't totally level we expect him to level it again if needed so we can have the flooring we want, and have already purchased. We are adding an underlayment which the GC recommended to help stop noise transmitting to our downstairs neighbor's condo. The floor still vibrates but it is much better and we do not have flooring or furniture in yet. We are also adding room size rugs to the bedroom and living room which we believe will help with the shaking and also help to stop noise transmission to our neighbor's condo. I have read that the weight of furniture helps stop the vibration. I hope that is true. Now that we have been walking on the floors for about 4 months I am not quite so unnerved by the shaking. I've also been assured by several people including SJ McCarthy (above), a structural engineer, and a former boss of my husband's who is a structural engineer with many condo's under his belt, that the "vibrations" we are feeling are normal for condo's built in the 70's. I didn't mean for this to be so long but man could I have used some reassurance when we ran into this problem last June. If I can answer any questions you might have, please ask. I am glad to help. If I were to do it again, I would get the floor leveled for sure but I WOULD NOT DO IT if I couldn't get references. And I think I would watch the work being done as best I could and definitely NOT pay them until the job was done. I think that is the only reason the company paid for the second leveling out of the money we were going to pay them with. They wanted to be paid. I guess I would end by saying that I have heard many times, if you don't do anything else, wall to wall carpeting can eliminate a lot of the shaking. I wish you the very best. Margie

Since you're gluing there will be no mechanical fasteners to transmit sound to the structure below. This allows you to use a standard sound deadening product like cork, rubber or composite sheet like WhisperMat, SuperSam, Proflex 90, or the like. The makers of the last three products tout superior results, but I'm skeptical. Jason has the right idea. Adding mass between the two will reduce the transfer of airborne sound. That makes a heavier option like rubber ideal for airborne transmission. That probably matters less in a house than in a condo because you already have an opening to the upstairs. To reduce transmission of impact sound you want to isolate the upper wear surface from the subfloor. If your material can be floated, that helps isolation and you can use a less expensive product like QuietWalk, but pay attention to how it would affect sound upstairs. Some floating underlayments result in a tapping sound, like walking on loose tile, especially with hard shoes.