Bruce Hardwood Flooring review: Substandard flooring - flaking like scabbies! 53

I have been installing hardwood floors for over 15 years. I've heard other installers complaining of the nightmares they've encountered with Bruce Hardwoods. Until recently I have been able to avoid it.

Unfortunately, I agreed to install 1,500 S/F of oak flooring in a new home -not knowing it was a Bruce product. I have never seen such crap. I am embarrassed it is made in the US, and I live in Canada...

30 to 40% of each box contains boards that have to be rejected.

1) Most boards have dents that are visible when viewed with a glare. They appear to be caused by wood chips between boards that were later stacked with significant weight. -very sloppy, and easily preventable.
2) Boards taper in width, leaving gaps with the following row.
3) Butt joints aren't cut to a true 90 degrees.
4) Boards are banana shaped.
5) Overwood -thickness varies
6) Even when a "good" board is found, it may split lengthwise when nailed in.

I now have a new rule. Absolutely NO installation of Bruce hardwood!

This US company has made the Chinese products look first rate. Without a doubt I would choose any hardwood from China before touching another Bruce manufactured nightmare.

Worst quality I have ever seen. My home has Bruce E557 WOODSTOCK 5" plank oak engineered flooring.

I knew all was not as it seems when you can see the underlying wood in the seams with the floor installed. Horrible wear and tear tolerance. If any source of moisture touches this floor it will warp around the edges because the veneer wear layer is so thin there is no material. I had to investigate and went into the attic to see if there was any extra pieces. Not only is it flimsy thin but the wear layer os barely 1mm thick !

Do yourself a favor do not even remotely consider buying this product.. I will be tearing out the flooring in this house within a few years. There should be a class action lawsuit

Help, I don't know what action to take. Bruce is going to send a rep to check for the humidity in my home. Funny I've had oak flooring in my dinning room for 22 year with no cracking.

Sincerely, Anna

If you think Bruce is a nightmare...we purchased Sierra Hardwood Flooring from the Georgia Flooring Outlet. The floor clouded after the first cleaning...dents, scratches, marring...$10, 000 worth of this substandard flooring. And the company says it is our problem!

I agree with everyone. I bought my first brand new house in 2005. It was a Bowen Family home, in Suwanee, GA. I had beautiful cherry laminate put in my entire 1st floor. It is peeling, has dents all over it and in general is an absolute mess. Many of my neighbors have the same problem. I am retired. I can't afford to replace this wood. I am very upset. The builders will not help. All of us are very frustrated. I think there should be a class action lawsuit against this kind of shoddy flooring.

I purchased a new home & one of the decorator choices was a maple hardwood by Bruce (which I chose). I will never purchase a home that has any Bruce hardwood flooring in it nor will I ever purchase the flooring myself. My flooring is not holding up to daily wear ... it has excessive denting & the Bruce rep says that they will not do anything about it because the denting is not the result of a manufacturer defect. He also stated that Bruce / Armstrong would not be interested in determining the cause of the problem. It's amazing to me that a company is so adamant about taking no responsibility for such a poor product that is marketed to be "durable".

Sheree, unfortunately I have to agree with what Bruce/Armstrong told you on this one...maybe not the way they handled it, but ultimately they are correct. No hardwood manufacturer will warranty against dents, scratches, etc. What should have been explained to you by the salesman that sold you the product is that maple, although harder than oak, will show dents far more because of the open, subtle graining. Closed-grain woods like oak, ash, and hickory dent as much and more than maple, but the pattern of the wood hides it.

We purchased the Bruce product, (3/8 Engineered, Butterscotch Glue Down) and had them professionally installed about 4 weeks ago. They looked great for a couple of days, but then we started noticing how easily the dent and chip. These floors chipped when my 15 month old son dropped his sippy cup!

We called Bruce / Armstrong and received the same answer other people on this blog mentioned, "Not their Problem."

Is anyone aware of a Class Action suit against Bruce / Armstrong?

Derrick in Atlanta

I just removed a carpet runner to clean and discovered my 3 month old bruce Brazilian Cherry floor was much lighter under the carpet! They told me to remove the runner and the color will return in a few weeks. Seems to me this should not happen at all. They did not offer any other help. Anyone else have this problem?

I agree, with all these comments. I installed a Bruce Engineered floor 4 years ago it was country natural E1601. The floor has not faired well over that time, the wood is ridiculously soft and prone to scratching and gouges also this was not a cheap product. I am extremely disappointed in the quality. I am currently in the process of removing 12 floor boards and replacing them. If I wasn't trying to sell the house I'd rip the whole lot up and put something in more durable. Don't touch this product it's really substandard.

I also agree with all the complaints about Bruce Armstrong florring. I have the oak florring in my kitchen and dining area and it dents and scratches far too easy. When I installed the floor I could not believe the gouged boards that I had to set aside and pick through, almost an entire boxfull of gouged boards. I put the moisture glue under my hardwood to protect from spills in the kitchen and dining area. I purchased my flooring from Lezzar Lumber and their sales person did not know enough about the product to inform us properly on this special order and it was very expensive! When we had our kitchen cabenets installed the floor was gouged underneath around the cabinet area even though mats were used and the carpenters were very careful. You cannot walk on these floors with shoes because it scuffs and scratches too easily. I would never purchase this floorig again, I have to live with this for a long time and I hope a law suit comes out against this Bruce Flooring Company.

IF I EVER BUY WOOD FLOORING AGAIN, IT WLL NOT BE A BRUCE PRODUCT. BRAND NEW HOME AND MY FLOORS ARE HORRIBLE! IT IS ENGINEERD WOOD AND SPLITTING IS THE MAIN PROBLEM. THE COMPANY THAT THE BUILDER BOUGHT THEM FROM CAME AND REPACED ABOUT 30 BOARDS. WE WERE SENT A LETTER FROM THE COMPANY SAYING THEY WILL NOT DO ANYTHING ELSE. IT DOESN'T MATTER WHAT I CLEAN IT WITH THEY ARE STILL SPLITTING. BRUCE SAYS THEY ARE NOT DEFECTIVE, SO HERE WE SIT WITH DISGUSTING FLOORING! I ALSO HOPE I LAWSUIT AGAINS BRUCE COMES OUT FOR SUCH LOW QUALITY PRODUCTS.

Sierra Hardwood Flooring - Will not stand behind their flooring. The warranty means nothing. They claim to manufacture this floor, but it is actually imported with no regulation of manufacturing or finishing. The flooring inspector told us it is a defective finish - it is cloudy, scratched, dented, A NIGHTMARE! And we are out $10, 000. Do not deal with this company - Georgia Flooring Outlet, McDonough, GA. Go to a reputable business!

The same type of problems I read here is similar to my complaints with the Bruce Floor I had installed. It just seams to dent, chip and scratch easily. There are places the top veneer is peeling. The cleaners they expect you to use are toxic. They come with warnings about skin and eye irritation. Also they say you should use with adequate ventilation. Has this company ever heard about "green" products. I usually keep my windows closed during cold weather in Michigan. A lawsuit needs to get started against Armstrong for delivering SUBSTANDARD products to consumers.

JD, Michigan

I just completely renovated my office and the product that was chosen for the conference room by my architecht / builder was an Armstrong Bruce Floor Product. It is absolutely terrible. The finish is crazing and the laminant is cracking in a bunch of places. It is going to cost a small fortune to replace it - much more than the cost of the floor and installation - it will involve a lot of carpentry work and painting. What a mess. I am terribly disappointed and frustrated with this product. DO NOT BUY IT! You will regret it when it starts to fall apart a week after it is installed. Armstrong has offerred that I do not have to pay for the product however, the cost of replacing will be 10x as much. Let me reiterate - do not buy this product!

I purchased the bruce engineered flooring. this is NOT my first engineered flooring..the floors are SUBSTANDARD and I certainly did not pay substandard prices! do not let anyone fool you into buying Bruce floors...they are the cheapest made, veneer is cracked and peeling, less than 4 months, shrinking from wall. and it is not anything we did or the contractor. I had two contractors come here, and they verified the products was very POOR! I have an appointment with the Bruce rep to show my floor..., will see what they say

DO NOT BUY

Just purchased 600 square feet of Bruce 3/4" Ellington Plank hardwood for the upstairs. The top urethane finish is filled with tiny bubbles in about 40% of the pieces. Good thing we noticed before it was installed. Back to the store it goes and NO MORE BRUCE!

We replaced our carpet in the living room and family room to hardwood floors in May 2010. Unfortunetly, we purchased the Bruce Armstrong oak hardfloors at Home Depot. After a month, we found multiple holes on the new floors and some our exsiting floors close to the new floors. We called Teminix. Guess what? He said they came from the Powder Post Beetles which I never heard of. But I just learned the bugs are very common in new oak hardwood floors. When we unistalled entired floors, we were shoked. The wholes on the back side were tremendous. It was so gross that made me goosebumps. Soon you can them in Youtube. By the way, they had not notified me untill I could finally talk to them in Oct. They said the case was turned down in July. Can you believe that? We still don't have flooors. We ended up to bring the case to the Small Claim Court. Wish me a good luck.

We're having major problems with our Bruce hardwood. We built a new home last year, and within months, I started noticing that our oak floors were "checking, " "graining" and splitting. I marked each board that I noticed this (approx 150 separate boards). I've had the installer out twice to tell me that it is not considered defective. A Bruce rep is coming out in a couple weeks to check the humidity in our home (which has been in the normal range both times the installer came out). The next step after the Bruce rep comes out (because I know that Bruce won't admit to a defective product) is to have a 3rd party come out to assess the floor. I really hope that someone will bring a class action lawsuit. I am not hopeful that my situation will ever be rectified, especially after reading the postings on this board.
~Frustrated in Maryland

I had Bruce lock and fold hand scraped flooring throughout the house installed May 2010, by September, 2010 the family room floors started to have flaws. The flaws only appeared in the family room. We went through channels, they sent a man out who immediately saw my pup and determined it was from urine. However she never piddled in those areas, had he tested for moisture, or used any acid testing strip, he would have learned that. We hired an attorney, Bruce gaffed off the date stated by our attorney. They denied all the claims. Our attorney said if we took it to court it would be there expert versus ours, who said it was a product flaw. So here we are. Never buy this product they do not live up to their warranty.

Bruce engineered flooring is crap it is so soft that the slightest bump leaves marks in it. We don't know what to do with this floor and it is in the entire house. The floor is 5 years old and it looks worse than most 20 year old floors.

I had my Bruce engineered flooring on concrete for 3 years now and the whole house has wrinkling on various boards, not all next to each other either? Ive had my moisture tested and Humidity and all with in the limits so what next $20, 000 plus to redo and I meanwhile no answers from Bruce they say it is moisture or cleaning. No water goes on these floors swifter dry only! Southeast climate and Ive had 6 homes with this same product and no problems.. Can it be the installers glue? Anybody

I understand your complaints about the quality. I am a contractor in CT. The quality of solid oak pre finished was good in my book. BUT The smell the floor has been giving off for the past three years is now giving us head aches. Has this been a problem with anyone else?

We bought a new home in 2007 with Bruce oak wood flooring in 60% of the home. We called the builder to find out what type of warranty there was against wood spliting and fading (where there is no longer a finish in front of our patio window). What we found out is that Bruce does not stand by fading (a naturally occurring event due to the sun) nor will they do anything because we don't have the receipt of purchasing the flooring. Since the builder does he would be the only one covered by warranty even if damage was covered. They recommend covering the wood floor! Well, the only way for us to cover in front of the entire patio window would be to have a custom made rug made in our dinette area (which we already have a 10x20 rug in already). And isn't why we put in wood floors in our homes is to see the beauty of the wood floor and NOT cover it up? So we have separated wood slats throughout our home and faded wood by the patio window. This is a terrible product! We have had had five homes with wood floors - this being the only one with Bruce - and the only one with this type of issue.

i will do a class action law suit this is a horrible product. Did you get anywhere in court?

Hi They did the exact same thing to me. horrible hrrible product and refuses to honor warrantee. Who can we call besides ghostbusters?

My husband and I just spent the last three days installing 286 feet of Bruce 3/4 inch hardwood in our bedroom. We purchased the hardwood from on online retailer. I can tell you that the quality Bruce hardwood is absolutely HORRIBLE. Planks were warped right out of the box. Also there were many planks that had no tongue or the groove was messed up. We had to cut the warped section off of many planks just to be able to make them useable. We also had to hand nail many of the boards just to get the large gap from the warping to close. I know wood is a natural product but many boards had extremely uneven stain and they just didn't look good in the room. What a nightmare project. I never expected such poor quality from a well known brand name. If you plan on using Bruce hardwood, you should definitely order more wood than wihat you need. We now have to fight with the online retailer to get a replacement box of wood for the un-useable planks because we were not able to finish the room and our project is stalled for who knows how long. This really becomes a headache when you have all of the stuff moved out of the room you are working on and scattered all over the rest of your house. Never again!

I have installed bruce for many years and have had no issues.first you have to buy the right bruce products, most companies offer lower grade products or higher grade products. The lower grades have many imperfections. Also it is wood flooring it will dent and scratch, they all do. To prevent dents you can buy harder flooring check the jenga scale it will tell you what the densest woods are. The person with brazillian cherry you should have been told that it will darken over time from the sun light that is why what is under the carpet is still its lighter original color.

We have the prefinished hardwood with microbevel. A totally unacceptable number of boards have the 'overwood' problem. Sharp edges and corners are uncomfortable to the feet. Bruce sent a rep to review and said it was in spec - that stupid credit card thickness excuse. They also totally ignored the two dozen spit and cracked boards. Would never recommend prefinished or even Bruce.

Recently installed bruce engineered hardwood – “EAK04LG” - This home was built in 1993 and had bruce engineered hardwood “glued” on concrete slab and it performed great, dogs, kids and daily wear and tear. Wanted to support our local business, Morehead city NC and American manufacturing - this completely blew up in our face. Within a week the product dented from simply sitting in our bar stools and the finish peeled from dog urine and the scratches from dog claws are hideous. The guy we bought the floors from said no wood floor is warranted against dogs. We did not hear this when he was estimating the job and we were telling him we were concerned about potty training issues with our dogs and about scratches “as our dogs were jumping all over him”! Bruce/Armstrong said we are on our own. This product is a complete embarrassment to American manufacturing – we would have got the same support and quality from china. DO NOT BUY BRUCE PRODUCTS PERIOD!

I wish I didn't listen to my wife but I did and bought 80 cases and needed 61 replaced before putting them in as they were warped right out of the package. My level is going to sue me for how much use I've put it through. I have planks that are almost a 1/2 inch warped out of the box and acclimated for nearly a week. Then I found out my product number, AHS4033, was discontinued I bet for warped wood. What a pain but I won't install warped wood for what ever reason. Just don't buy this crap it gives american made product a bad name. The china stuff is like 50 % better than this over half of the wood per box is warped.

We built a home in Murfreesboro, TN and moved in december 2011 with a company called Fox Ridge. The products they used are terrible and low quality, but that's a different story. We too have Bruce floorings and it is the sandy, grainy type of hardwood. When we went to choose the flooring for our new home, there was not much selection that was in our budget so my husband picked the flooring. No word from the sales lady at the flooring that the hardwood would chip so easily. Of course she wouldn't let a customer know, but now we are stuck with some cheap ### hardwood flooring that scratches and chips so easily. We do not wear shoes in the house, and we took really good care of it till I started noticing it was chipping and scratching over time. We plan to rip that piece crap apart ad install tiles instead.

We built a house in Murfreesboro, TN too...completed it in June 2010. We bought our floors (Armstrong/Bruce) from Haynes Brothers. Within the first 6-8 months we started experiencing splitting, chipping, top layer bubbling. Contacted H.B., which came out, then Bruce/Armstrong rep came out. Told us they'd buff whole house and repair bubbles, but after that we can never use warranty again. So, we will wait, 2 years later...floors are getting worse:( I have 3500sq ft. of this crap in my house! Going after H.B. and Mfg. I will absolutely join a class action suit if there is one to join!

I installed Bruce laminate flooring throughout the house. It is fragile and chips easily if something hard is dropped on it. It is also easily and quickly damaged by water. I'm already thinking about having to replace it.

This would be my first time installing wood floor so I went to local store and I saw cinnamon maple solid half inch thick samples looked gorgeous in the store. I didn't really know anything about Bruce I just bought 190 SQFT at $3.97 per SQFT. I was going to install it by myself this stuff is garbage. Luckily I opened only 3 boxes to inspect and I found so many issues bent planks, cracked, cut wrong, chips, different wood colors, some dark stains, noticed lots of holes and someone tried to fill them up I mean they almost used black filler it's so noticeable . I am taking this stuff back today hopefully I will get my refund back. I am very disappointed I just can't believe how careless some people are to make such a bad product.

I'm a general contractor, we installed approx. 1700 sq. ft. of 3/4" maple flooring for a customer. We were building his house for him. He selected Bruce for his flooring. He is wanting to sue me because his floors squeak when he walks across them. As mentioned above, the board have a taper to them, they were bowed, just a bad product. I'm the bad guy because I refused to replace the wood at no cost. I have never had any problems with hardwood floors until now.I have agreed to provide free labor to fix the problem if he can tell me how. The wood is junk, and I can't believe a company like Armstrong would produce such junk.

So happy to say that Haynes Brothers in Murfreesboro, TN has been a TREMENDOUS help! Thank goodness I bought this product from them and not from an internet supplier! After 2 1/2 years and 3 visits from an Armstrong rep, we are close to finally settling this issue. If you have a defective product, don't give up keep the pressure on them.

Thank you Haynes Brothers:)

I had Bruce/Armstrong Legacy Manor engineered hardwood installed in my house 3 years ago, and it looks absolutely terrible. Within a year, the finish is flaking in several places and it is continuing to get worse. The flooring company that installed the floor has come out twice, once they said it was moisture problem, the second time, they had no answer, and just said it was something in my home environment? The Armstrong Rep. came out during the first visit, asked if he could test one of the extra planks that I had, which was stored in the original packaging, on a carpeted surface, and the test results came back that the product was fine. The Flooring company (Kermans Fine Flooring, Indianapolis, IN) is now refusing to even answer emails or provide me with any requested paperwork.

We ordered Bruce Rustic Heritage Golden Brown SHS5503 on March 19, 2013 and the order was back ordered until May 25th. On July 11th the floor layers refused to install it as it was cut crooked and had other manufacturing flaws. The dealer backed up his installers and called the Bruce flooring rep to see what can be done. We have 1, 200 sq feet of this stuff costing $7, 931. I would think twice before ordering this product. Our front room, dinning room, kitchen, hall, and entry way are now in shambles with part of the old flooring removed to the subfloor and covered with paper. Bruce flooring is strewn around with pieces partially assembled to show the manufacturers rep the various problems with the product. Bruce (Armstrong Flooring) and the Chinese are probably laughing all the way to the bank. Looks like it is time for a class action suit to sober them up.

I am 63 years old. I have had hard wood floors in my homes my whole life. We recently bought a brand new townhome in Fairfax va. The builders option over carpet was Bruce hardwood flooring. We have been in our townhome for 6 months. This is by far the worst hard wood flooring I have ever experienced. The floorboards are shrinking. The gaps between boards are wide enough to slide a nickel down. Crumbs, dirt, dog hair all gets trapped in these spaces. Not to even mention the nicks, and heel marks and dents throughout along with boards splitting. There are just 2 of us living here with occasional family visits (and 1 visiting dog). They come and measure humidity!. Tell me my house is dry which it is not. I bought a humidity gauge and we are normal. They then come and someone measure the humidity of the board. .? Doesn't all wood normally dry out?
My husband who is not at all a carpenter installed an engineered hard wood purchAsed
From lumber liquidators in our last home and it was perfect. We never had any shrinkage and it wore excellently. Do not buy Bruce flooring!