Floor King

To install my new bamboo floor, Floor King’s workers, Victor and Carlos, removed the old kitchen tile and started to chip away at the remaining thinset mortar (the raised cement that held the old tiles down) from my condo’s concrete subfloor, using a small jackhammer. It’s a noisy, dusty process so I stepped out to do some errands. When I returned a few hours later, the cork underlayment was already in place and they were starting to put down the finished bamboo floor.
That was fast, I thought.
That night, with the floor about ½ installed, I noticed they’d left some old thinset at the edge of the subfloor, where it was still exposed. That didn’t seem right, so I took some video of it:
And I brought it up with them the next day. Victor assured me it didn’t matter if there was some remaining thinset around the edge. They continued working and finished putting down the cork underlayment and the bamboo by the end of day two. Beautiful, but something didn’t seem right. The floor was very bouncy in the kitchen, where it was replacing tile, as opposed to the living room, where it was replacing carpet. Victor promised «this is normal.»
Uhhhhh…
Two days later the first board in the kitchen cracked. It is now showing signs of failure all over the kitchen area and in a few other places as well. See the dime to give it scale? This is TWO days after the floor installation:
This is a floor that’s supposed to last 15 years?
The other day my cat walked across the kitchen and I heard a board crack loudly. That’s right… the floor is so badly installed that my nine-​pound tabby cracked a floor board.
I complained to Richard, Floor King’s owner, and he talked to his workers.
So here’s what happened as you can probably already figure out. When I got tired of the dust and noise and left while they were preparing the subfloor, they stopped removing the old thinset and simply threw the cork underlayment on top of the bumpy, cracked, leftover debris from the old tiles. In other words, it wasn’t just around the edges – they didn’t prep the subfloor at all. So the result is a bouncing floor that’s not evenly supported and is now breaking apart.
Got that? Rather than do the hard but essential work of smoothing and cleaning up the subfloor, they put the floor over the old mortar.
I also have a cracked threshold, which was also installed incorrectly. As Richard joked (although I didn’t find it funny) the floor is fine as long as I stay out of the high-​traffic areas, such as the kitchen.
Update: they came back two weeks later to redo the kitchen. They arrived late and it took two more days. I worked with them, taking care of grunt tasks. It also confirmed the obvious: the subfloor under the kitchen was ridiculous! They had literally thrown the cork underlayment over leftover debris. It’s much better now, but there’s still an area with a noticeable hump in the kitchen. They broke off some of the connecting/​locking tabs on the boards when they removed them and I now have minor gaps between the boards. And they left mountains of garbage, dust and debris for me to clean up alone (which took days to do). They left a caulking gun, a tube of caulk and some thresholds for me to finish the edges myself.
That’s what happened. They were cheaper than the competition, for what that’s worth.

I used this place for getting new carpet /​floor in my condo in Arcadia. The salesman (ask for Richard) was super helpful and offered me extremely low prices compared to a few of the other places I window-​shopped. He was extremely communicative and patient, answering all my questions and helping me understand the upsides/​downsides for each type of floor material and helped me pick what kind of underlayment to get. Floor King’s workers were extremely careful with my furniture and worked very quickly. Overall, I was happy with their services and the way my floor/​carpet turned out. Looks wonderful!