Pro Handyman Blog

Carpentry noises generally are not very good. A squeaky floor can drive you nuts. If you have floor joists and one of them is uneven, the floor will not have the proper support. If one joist is out of plane with the others, there will be deflection in the sub floor causing movement.

This movement can be very small, but generally the joist that is an eighth inch lower than the others will not be supporting the weight of a person, for example. The neighboring joists will have to carry the load of the one that is not in line.

This situation will also cause a noise over time as the movement of the sub floor will ride up and down on the shank of the nails causing a shrill squeak. The noise can be fixed in a variety of ways. If you have access from below, you can use wood shims and glue to span the gap between sub floor and joist. You can also install bracing from one joist to the next using either mechanical fasteners or additional lumber, or you can shoot nails through the sub floor into the joist and opposing angles. There is also a tool that screws a fastener into the sub floor and then breaks the head off of the fastener. Here is an article on a squeaky floor repair.