Flooring in Cleveland Park: Victorian Houses & Art Deco Apartments

Cleveland Park takes its name from Grover Cleveland, who bought a farmhouse here in 1886 and remodeled it into a Queen Anne summer house called Red Top. The Cleveland Park Company, formed in 1894, developed the surrounding land, and between 1895 and 1909 it hired architects such as Robert Thompson Head, its most prolific designer, and Waddy Wood to design large frame houses on local Rock Creek granite foundations. In a city of brick rowhouses, that concentration of architect-designed wood houses is unusual. Along Connecticut Avenue, the 1920s and '30s added a second kind of home: grand apartment buildings like the Broadmoor, completed in 1929 and a co-op since 1948, and Mihran Mesrobian's Art Deco Sedgwick Gardens of 1931.

Those two housing types need very different flooring work, so this page treats them separately.

Housing stock

1890s–1900s frame houses in Queen Anne, Shingle, Colonial Revival and Arts & Crafts styles, later brick houses, and 1920s–30s Connecticut Avenue apartments.

Floors we find

Oak strip on main floors, pine upstairs, borders in parlors, and oak parquet over concrete in the apartment buildings.

Most-requested work

Refinishing, squeak repair, sleeping-porch conversions, stair runners and parquet repair.

Plan around

Framing that flexes, sloped porch floors, damp stone-foundation basements and co-op rules.

Victorian house or Connecticut Avenue apartment?

Frame houses move: fixing squeaks properly

A 120-year-old wood-framed house has dried, settled and been re-plumbed several times, and the floor tells you about it. Squeaks come from boards rubbing on each other or on nails where the subfloor has pulled away from a joist. The fix depends on what's below:

• From below, where the basement ceiling is open. Gaps between joist and subfloor are shimmed and glued. This is the cleanest fix and leaves no marks on the finished floor.
• From above, where the ceiling is finished. Specialty screws pull the floor down to the joist and snap off below the surface; the small holes are filled.
• Time it with a refinish. Fixing squeaks right before sanding means the filled holes disappear under the new finish instead of showing as spots.
• Not every creak is a squeak. A sag or bounce across a room points to a joist problem, which needs subfloor repair before any cosmetic work.

Enclosed sleeping porches: level the floor first

Cleveland Park's houses were built as summer retreats before air conditioning, and many had sleeping porches. Most have since been enclosed as offices, nurseries or sunrooms, and nearly all share one problem: the floor slopes. Porches were framed to shed rain, commonly around ¼ inch per foot away from the house, and enclosing them didn't change that.

1. Measure the slope across the whole room, not just at the door.
2. Level the structure with tapered sleepers or adjusted framing, so the new floor is flat and meets the adjoining room at the same height.
3. Consider what's below. A porch built over open air stays cold in winter; if the underside is reachable, it's the moment to insulate it.
4. Lay a new subfloor, then oak to match the adjoining room, woven in at the old doorway so the conversion reads as original.

Oak downstairs, pine upstairs

Builders of the era often put their best oak on the main floor and plainer pine in bedrooms and third floors, which were expected to be carpeted. Pulling up that carpet leaves a choice:

• Refinish the pine. Sound pine looks warm and period-appropriate. It dents far more easily than oak, so it's sanded lightly and finished with a durable, low-sheen coat.
• Cover it. In heavy-use rooms, carpet protects the pine and keeps it recoverable for later.
• Lay new oak over it. Possible, but it raises the floor about ¾ inch, which means trimming doors and reworking thresholds and the top stair nosing.

On the stairs themselves, a stair runner with rods suits the open, landing-style staircases in these houses and quiets a wood-framed house noticeably. Worn treads can be replaced through stair installation. Our guide to carpet in historic DC homes explains how to carpet over old floors without damaging them.

Apartment parquet on Connecticut Avenue

The Connecticut Avenue buildings mostly have oak parquet or strip set over concrete, and after nearly a century the typical problems are predictable:

• Loose or hollow-sounding blocks. The original adhesive has let go in patches. We lift the loose blocks, clean them, and reset them with a compatible flooring adhesive.
• Missing or damaged slats. Replacement pieces are taken from a closet, where new stock fills in, so the visible floor stays original.
• Sanding cross-grain patterns. Every direction is against the grain for half the pieces, so final passes are done with a multi-disc sander to keep scratches from showing.
• Limited thickness. Some parquet is thin, with fewer sandings available than solid strip. We check before quoting a full sand.
• Black adhesive. Test it for asbestos before any block is scraped or the floor is removed.

Co-op and condo buildings also have alteration agreements, work-hour limits and acoustic requirements. Our co-op approval checklist walks through them. Worn terrazzo in lobbies and entry halls is covered by our terrazzo restoration service.

Stone foundations and basements

Those Rock Creek granite foundations are handsome and porous, so Cleveland Park basements tend to run damp. We moisture-test before recommending anything, and usually choose waterproof SPC luxury vinyl or tile over wood. Larger projects are covered under basement finishing.

What Cleveland Park projects typically cost

Ranges include materials and standard labor. Asbestos testing, building deposits and structural framing repairs are itemized separately.

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