[UPDATE] LM Flooring in cooperation with Tri-West (their local distributor) have generously offered to refund most of our flooring cost. This will allow us to invest in replacing some of our furniture to match the flooring. I would like to thank LM and Tri-West for their quick resolution of the matter and I was very happy to learn that they stand behind their product.
We recently purchased our new home in Irvine. The builder wasn’t very generous in terms of flooring – the standard was cheap carpet and vinyl, so one of our very first projects was to replace the flooring.
After visiting multiple show rooms, we finally decided to go with hardwood by LM Flooring. The company’s products seem popular out here, carried in many retailers, so we figured it was a fairly safe bet. The color we selected the is the “Bentley Smoked Oak”; at least in the sample, it looked great (you can see the Bentley collection here).
Renovation Day
Installers came in with the planks packaged in boxes. I verified the label on the box was correct, opened the door for them to begin work and took off for work.
When we came back that evening we were shocked. The flooring came out much darker than we had remembered it, and our small little home now seemed even smaller and darker. We almost wished we had kept the carpet and vinyl.
Wanting to test our memory, we took a small plank and headed to the retailer to compare with the sample we fell in love with at the store. We were shocked how absurd the difference in color was. This was not a simple “variation” in color – no reasonable person would consider this a natural variation, it’s a completely different dye. Smoked Oak? More like burned oak. See for yourself:
The piece of wood on the top is what was installed, the bottom was the store sample. We even went as far as going to other stores to compare with their sample – same result.
To make things worse, the bullnose (for the stairs) came in the color of the sample. The installer noticed this and went to the local distributor to look for a bull nose in matching colors, but after opening all 4 boxes they had in stock none of them matched!!
We had no choice but to keep this flooring in hope that it will grow on us. Removing it will be way too expensive since it’s all glued down.
9 replies on “LM Flooring Review”
This is infuriating! They should take responsibility for the mistake and compensate you for it.
Best of luck with your claim against them!
I'm sorry to hear about your experience.
I hope we won't go trough the same nightmare when we do our flooring in a month.
Hope to hear that you've got compensated properly soon..
Sorry you had such a bad experience, hope that the contractor will mend his ways and make it right.
Such a shame. Sorry to hear about such terrible experience. The retailer should do something to work out with manufacture and somehow compensate you…
Dan, I'm so glad you posted this story. As it happens, we were just about to install a LM Flooring-produced Hickory in our LA house when we noticed just how different the wood to be installed was from the sample. Luckily, we caught this before anything was installed.
Would you be open to a quick phone call or email exchange? I am very interested to know what you are doing to resolve this issue. I'm going to use your experience as an example when I speak to my installer tomorrow.
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I am thinking of purchasing LM wood flooring. How is your floor holding up?
It's holding up alright. Just be sure to check the product before it's installed and compare it with the store sample.
You're comment/review is the only review I can find on the Internet. Frustrating because I'm looking to have floors installed by the end of the month the latest. Do you still feel the same way?
NOoooooooo, don't do it!! We just had LM Allegheny installed. The top (stained) layer is thin and fragile as an eggshell! Don't do it, please.