I see no one commented but I will. Thank you for sharing! And thanks LM for finally doing the right thing.

@Anonymous Anonymous, how are those floors holding up?

Thanks for asking! We haven't had the floors repaired yet, and some additional defects have emerged with wear. The original installer actually went out of business, and the regional distributor has been non-responsive to my emails, so I've been meaning to reach back out to LM Flooring, who as mentioned above were very responsive. I had asked at the time what would happen if the installer went out of business--it seemed plausible at the time, and I was right--and they told me it wouldn't be a big deal to find an alternate installer to do the replacements of the defective floor boards.

I'm concerned about the nails through the high-end cork/foam acoustic pad. Normally that is NOT allowed. Every nail/metal piece the pierces cork/acoustic foam creates a little metal telephone wire (wire is made of long strands of metal...which nails/staples/cleats imitate). This telephone wire TRANSMITS noise down the shaft of the metal nail/wire.

Now imagine each board has 4-6 nails (depending on size of plank). Now imagine how many planks were used in each room. It is possible you have tens of THOUSANDS of telephone wires running through your floor.

If you have the make of the underlayment, I can let you know whether or not it is allowed to be pierced. There is one or two brands that allow it, all the rest do NOT.

There are a number of underlayments that are authorized for nailing, but this is based on their supposed ability to seal around the nail shafts when the underlayment is expected to act as a vapor barrier and protect the floor from moisture (e.g. coming up through a concrete slab). Our underlayment is one of these, but since the underlayment was put down on the second floor, moisture isn't an issue.

Agreed that the nails couple the flooring to the subfloor to a considerable degree, though the underlayment still makes the floor a lot more "dead" than without it. But now I'm curious, what would the alternative have been? You can't glue down over underlayment, right? I suppose you could fully float a click lock floor, but I think those are mostly cheaper products, not better quality wood.

If sound isolation was really a priority, it seems like a better option would be to put underlayment, the thicker the better, down, then float a secondary OSB or plywood subfloor over that, then put the flooring down over that secondary subfloor. That would yield real decoupling not compromised by nails, but it would also be a lot more involved and it would raise the height of the floor considerably.

Depending on the underlayment (6mm or 12mm cork) can be glued into place and a wood floor glued over top. In fact, 6mm and 12mm cork underlayment are designed to work under porcelain tile. Cork's deflection rating is so good that it can be used under the most rigid product without worrying about movement.

Your mentioned that your underlayment is a cork/rubber hybrid. A VERY expensive version of that has more cork than rubber. A cheaper version has more 'foam' than cork. Which means some of the 'cork-rubber' hybrids can be glued ($3/sf = normal for these) where as the lower priced foam-cork products cannot be glued ($0.80/sf).

Again, the nature of the underlayment (and the name) will tell you if you are allowed a 'double stick' or not.

Fascinating, I would have thought underlayments, especially cork, wouldn't have enough structural integrity to support a glued floor, i.e. no matter how great the glue, the top layer of underlayment would eventually peel away and the floor would no longer be solidly bonded.

I have had similar issues with my flooring from LM they are splintering all over into socks and swifter or any type of mop or even bare feet! I am an interior designer and this is my personal floor through out my entire house. I have never experienced anything like this. I purchased through my local pro source who started out willing to help and then after months has not followed through. We did have an inspector out who approved 7 out of the hundred of wood planks we have in our house to be replaced. The problem is that 7 was done within the first 2 months of living in the house. We are now 7 months or so in and there are much more then 7 and they just keep accumulating. I would like to have my floors replaced. To me this seems to be a lemon law issue.... I shouldn't be worried about my 2 year old son getting splinters from our wood floors inside!! It is a bummer because the floors are beautiful but just very very cheaply made. I highly recommend avoiding this manufactures products. I know I will not be using them for any of my projects.

I'm sorry to hear about your experience. LM Flooring was initially pretty responsive on here and they approved a warranty repair that seemed appropriate. But my local flooring contractor was slow and unresponsive, and the distributor was also unresponsive. Eventually the local contractor went out of business, which both the distributor and LM Flooring assured me wouldn't be a major impediment. But both the distributor and LM Flooring have since become unresponsive. So my approved warranty repair never happened. And additional floor defects have emerged in the interim. I am still trying to get a response, but like you, starting to think about what my legal options might be :(

Update: A few days ago I sent another direct message to LM Flooring via Houzz, and very quickly their regional distributor (who recently replaced the regional distributor who had previously been handling my warranty claim) reached out to me. I get the impression LM Flooring itself is very responsive to warranty claims; the regional distributors also seem proactive and responsive, with the caveat that the prior one did drop the ball when my installer became non-responsive and later went out of business; and most of the responsibility for my challenging experience falls on my installer (who is now out of the picture). At this point, I'm feeling more optimistic after getting off the phone with the new regional distributor. I will update here as relevant.

Another update: New regional distributor is extremely responsive, but also shared some bad news. According to him, my installer received shipment of replacement flooring and pocketed money to cover associated labor, at the same time as he was ignoring my emails and calls and many months before he went bankrupt. And to be fair, the prior regional distributor and LM Flooring both failed to respond to my attempts to communicate with them also. Now, LM Flooring is offering me another batch of replacement flooring, *but* they are not offering to cover the labor to install it (shipment to a local installer may or may not be covered, that remains to be determined). On the one hand, I understand that the installer defrauded both me and LM Flooring, and I'm grateful they're offering replacement flooring. On the other hand, if LM Flooring and/or the distributor had responded to my repeated inquiries and told me they'd already shipped flooring and paid money for the repair, I would have had an opportunity to hold the installer accountable before he went bankrupt.