The Terrifying Tales of Floor Covering Fails

In this spooky season of black cats and skeletons, we gather ‘round for tales not of ghosts or ghouls, but of something even scarier... flooring fails! From squelching vinyl to exploding tiles, these stories will send shivers down your spine. Pull up a pumpkin, grab your candy, and settle in for the scariest of stories.

The secret of the ooze
Imagine this: a beautiful, glue-down luxury vinyl plank floor installed perfectly... or so it seemed. You walk across the room and squish—your foot sinks slightly, followed by an ominous squelching sound. Soon you start seeing black goo ooze between the planks.

This terrifying sight is no work of fiction. It’s caused by moisture infiltration and plasticizer migration. Old adhesive mixing with the new adhesive or the wrong adhesive being used will cause this condition. The adhesive breaks down into a sticky sludge, no longer able to hold the planks in place. Unfortunately, the only cure is total floor replacement. And once it starts, there’s no stopping The Blob... 

Creaking, crackling wood 
Your new wood or wood-look floor was just installed, it looks beautiful. Then it starts… creaking and crackling sounds like someone is walking across the floor when there’s no one home but you. Just like Poe’s Tell-Tale Heart, these noises echo through the room, unnerving you more by the minute.  

This is usually caused by poor milling on wood, floating luxury vinyl, and laminate floors. The movement in the joints cause the planks to rub against each other, causing a crackling or creaking sound. When wood floors are installed tight without expansion space, sometimes the sound can be sharp or a groan. This will sound different than the subfloor movement as that is a deeper groaning sound.   

The Phenomenon 
Carpets are supposed to be soft, comforting, and safe. But not all carpets. Some, it seems, are possessed. You vacuum, clean, and tend to your carpet carefully, but still, strange shadows appear, as if some ghostly figure walked through the room. In another area, it looks like a witch spilled her pot of brew. You replace a section or the room, but the ghostly shapes return, like specters haunting the fibers themselves.

This eerie phenomenon is known as shading, pooling, or watermarking, and the scariest part? No one knows exactly why it happens. The mysterious patterns form without rhyme or reason, sometimes immune to repair or replacement. It’s as if the floor itself is cursed… 

The Perfect Storm 
It was a dark and stormy night, no, actually it was a sunny day when the floor went BOOM. The leafy trees in the backyard were trimmed during the summer. The sun is at its lowest in the sky in the winter. The sun shines brightly through the windows, a pleasant warmth fills the room. But below the surface, a deadly battle is brewing. The sun’s unrelenting rays beam through the aged glass, heating the tiles in the kitchen like a cauldron over a fire. The tile floor, already laid too tightly without expansion joints, begins to crack under the pressure. You don’t hear the screams, but the tile does.  

“Too Hot! Too Hot!”  
“Move over!” they said.  
"We can't! 
"But I must MOOOOOVVVVVE!!!!"  

The pressure from the expanding heat has nowhere to go, and the floor literally rises up in rebellion. The tiles crack, buckle, and scream “Save us!” But by then, it’s too late—the damage is done. 

Oh, the horror.

The End? 
Have your own spine-chilling flooring tale to share? We’d love to hear it!  
Flooring fails happen even when they aren’t scary. We can help figure out what is causing it.