Yikes, we just had a local Flooring Contractor begin our flooring project. We're replacing the carpet that was original to the home, and ripping out the tile in several areas to install LVP over slab. The Contractor talked a great game, telling us about his 15 years experience and his "5 Star" reviews. When I asked about getting the old carpet glue up, he assured me he had a "power scraper" that will take the glue right up. Asked about filling nail holes from tack strips, he said he had self leveling stuff to fill those. My wife and I knowing we were getting new flooring began removing old carpet and tack strips where accessible. I filled the little craters left by pulling up the tack strip and scraped up what I could with the glue. Figuring this would save some time for the contractor. Well when it came to do the actual prep, he suddenly changed tune saying he's never fills those hole in the concrete it doesn't affect the floor at all and is a waste of time. I can see that might be true with the small holes, but pulling up the tack strips left from pretty sizable "craters." The next "red flag" was when he changed his tune on scraping the glue, he claimed the underlayment would take up any imperfections and we'd never notice once the floors are in. He said something interesting, when he said that when he's installing he asks himself if the floor will feel good under foot to the customer. Which we took to mean, if the customer never knows he didn't do a proper prep or follow manufacturer installation requirements, it's a win. When it came to following Manufacturers installation procedure, he claimed that's just CYA stuff and he does it his way. Running the underlayment perpendicular to the direction of the LVP, nah, he said you don't really need to do that, besides it takes more time. Then there's the logistic accommodations we went over with him from the get go, due to our pets. He agreed to 3 phases...until he began work then he suddenly claimed he never agreed to 3 phases, just two, then went into how he's never had a client who couldn't just put the pets in carriers and put them all in one room, then he questioned why we would adopt feral cats. That was not his job to judge our choice to rescue some cats. Oh it gets worse, with him not respecting our property. When he was taking up the tile in a bathroom, he put the toilet in our Jacuzzi shower. Did not cover the glass shower doors to protect them from "flying" mastic and tile chips. When we called him on it, the excuse was "I know what that shower is made of, and putting the toilet in there won't hurt it." We said that wasn't the point, the point was you didn't respect our property. Anyway it was excuse after excuse, argument after argument about how we trying to tell him how to do his job. Well in the end he was pretty pissed off that we expected he followed through on things we discussed and do a proper surface prep, so he quit the job. We now have a living room with basically a pallet of LVP, boxes of QuietWalk and bundles of base board. We've got another contractor coming in a few days to give us a quote on completing the project.

The concrete slabs of yesteryear do NOT have moisture barriers underneath them. They are sitting on wet earth. And the earth has SOOOO much water you can see it from space (we are a water planet...the ground is floating in oceans of water). A concrete slab is POROUS and acts like a big sponge. As water in the swimming pool we call 'ground' (the stuff your slab is sitting on) moves through the slab, it evaporates once it hits the surface. We call this 'wicking'. Once you 'cap' the top of the cement slab (ie. lay vinyl planks over top) you plug the escape route for the water to evaporate. This creates a back up of water just sitting there inside your cement sponge...filling it and filling it and then filling it. Something HAS to give. Water is the most damaging force on earth (look at the Grand Canyon...that's due to water). The water pressure in the slab became SOOO high (how high SJ?) that it broke the bond of the SLC causing it to lift up. That's what happens when the slab is not conditioned enough prior to laying down new concrete. By 'conditioning' I mean shot blasting, applying a couple of layers of moisture barrier (two coats is a good place to start) and then a coat of primer and then pouring new concrete over top (everything given the full time to cure of course = days or weeks). The above process is expensive (can be $5 - $7/sf) but well worth it. I'm sorry you have gone through this. Your installer did the best s/he could with the information s/he had. Sadly, these old basements are tough to deal with. They required a 'wet basement' specialist who will come in and do the assessment (moisture readings...inspection...etc) and then recommend/do the work required to get rigid flooring over top of the wet slab. I'm sorry but this is a complete do over. The carpet would have been the better choice because carpet 'breathes'. It would have let the moisture through and the slab would have been happy-happy because it could keep doing what it had been doing for 80+ years = wicking plenty of water into the house.

We have hardwood on our main floor and LVP on our stairs down to the basement as well as on the basement floor (over cement). When the LVP was first installed on the stairs (it's been a little over a year now), my husband thought the "lip" part of the stair treads (the bull-nosed edge piece) was not installed perfectly flush and secure on several (I think 4) of the treads, so I wonder if that is not uncommon and is what your flooring contractor is worried about. I didn't even notice it, but my husband is a perfectionist and it bothered him. Rather than complain and have the installers come back to address the issue, my husband fixed the issue himself. I think he used tiny little nails (with no heads) to better secure the edge pieces to the adjoining LVP pieces, and I used dots of acrylic paint from my art supplies to cover the bitty nail holes. We have never had a problem with them since and we are up and down the stairs many times daily so they get heavy use. Just wanted to mention our experience in case that makes any difference for your decision. I don't regret using it on our stairs. We picked an LVP that coordinates pretty well with our upstairs hardwood in color, just a little more rustic which fits our basement vibe. We didn't want to introduce yet another type of flooring just for the stairs.

FYI , we're using Ikea so cabinets hang on rail anchored to wall. Fridge ✅, D/W ✅ but we're not doing slide in stove. We chose built in wall oven and cooktop ie: counter will sit on top cabinet housing oven of so yes/no flooring underneath? After removing thinset, hubby had to get grinder to level a hump in floor. He and I disagreed that it was good enough. Being right is nothing to gloat about after the herculean effort he put in to achieve, time and $ to get right and fall short, but now he's looking at alternative fixes rather than remove the entire kitchen LVP boards and throw leveler down. In one video they drilled a hole in the seam and injected spray foam to fill the gap, in another, they cut out the spongy board and set in new board by shaving the tongue and corner and gluing the tongue edges around etc... I'm not sure what trick he'll attempt but if it doesn't work, it'll set us so far back. Might be difficult to get someone in just to fix, Trades peeps are super busy right now in my area and may ultimately end up doing similar fix. Currently cabinets against wall are level but we still have yet to mess around with peninsula.