Browne's Floors & More

Keith Browne did a good job on the installation of the porcelain tile in about 150 sq ft in my first floor. It has not come up yet and the grout lines are neat and small, and I am relatively happy with that job. However, the bamboo hardwood flooring was installed incorrectly in the living and dining rooms and the kitchen. He did not lay the boards properly so they interlock with one another and are in a weird pyramid pattern. Boards in several places around the wall are now coming up and the flooring in front of the sliding glass door is not secured. He glued down a piece of quarterround trim but did not nail it down and it came up within two weeks after installation in this area, causing the boards to flex over an inch in front of the door. Prior to installation, Keith Browne and my general contractor decided that it would be "too expensive" to self-level the concrete slab over my objections and refused to tell me how much self-leveling would cost. The slab was not level at all in many places, and instead chose to charge me for Keith to level the floor by hand, pouring and grinding concrete in multiple places on the slab and using a 6-foot level to level it by hand across the floor on his hands and knees. He also made me get new, thicker underlayment because he could not get the floor level. Several flooring installation experts I have had to bring in have told me that it was installed completely incorrectly and should have been self-leveled, which is not that expensive and results in a completely level surface to float the floor. The amount of dust he put into the house due to the relentless grinding is incredible. It is still falling from the ceilings and caused problems with my furnace and thermostat. It took over two weeks to install the floor, although my incompetent contractor kept bringing in other trades and interfering with the floor install, which should have been done last. Keith Browne has refused to send me estimates for taking up the floor and correcting the low spots he missed during the initial installation, claiming the low spots were "outside the scope of the work" when I paid him extra to level the floor initially at his request, which is ridiculous. He claims his work is "100% guaranteed" but he has made no effort to rectify these problems. He told me he has never had to take up a floor to fix it and thus I would not want him to take mine up since he installed it incorrectly in the first place. The boards of the click-together floor were not placed right to secure each board to the next, which is why it is all coming up around the edges, according to the estimates I have received.