Squeaky floor repair in Old Ottawa South

The common house form. The Foursquare plan found throughout the neighbourhood is a boxy two-storey house that puts bedrooms directly over the living rooms, so every step upstairs loads a joist that somebody is sitting under. Over a nailed board subfloor that has dried and swelled through decades of Ottawa winters, that layout carries the noise of each loose board straight to the room below.

Because it carries every trip between floors. A Foursquare has four rooms on each level and one main stair joining them, so all the traffic between the bedrooms and the living rooms crosses the same treads. The noise starts at the joints where treads, risers and stringers meet, once the wedges and nails holding them have shrunk and loosened. Those joints can be refastened and re-wedged in place, so the original stair stays.

Yes, in most cases. In the Old Ottawa South census tract, 68.6 per cent of dwellings were built before 1961 and 78.4 per cent before 1981, while only 12.4 per cent date from after 2000. Most houses are the original Craftsman and Foursquare homes, likely with their original floors still in place, so the starting point is refastening the boards you have rather than replacing them.

Because two floor systems meet there. The original house typically has board subfloor on sawn joists that have had a century to dry out; the addition has newer joists and sheet subfloor, and new lumber shrinks in its first years. Where the two are joined, a small difference in height or movement can open a gap at a joist or a seam. The fix is to shim and fasten that junction, from below where it can be reached.