Help! What type of flooring do we need?

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The firm we chose to renovate our kitchen recommended LVT flooring, which we agreed to; it was laid . . . and as soon as we walked into the room we knew it was rubbish. The floor is springy in parts, you can feel lumps and bumps underneath, and it very quickly started to come apart and looks bloody awful.

It's clearly the wrong product for the floor. Turns out part of the kitchen floor is concrete and the remaining part timber, so they can't screed the floor in order to get a level surface as the screed would just go through the gaps in the timber.

They've suggested tiling the floor instead, but the old flooring was tiles and they were all broken and coming up - presumably because of the uneven surface underneath!

So what do people use if a floor can't be perfectly levelled - is there something that is forgiving of an uneven surface?

Our bathroom floor is timber, very old and uneven. We boarded over it, I want to say with hardboard panels but it was a very long time ago and I'm not sure. It took what sounded like 7 million nails but it hasn't budged since. Under the floor is all the gas pipes, water pipes and electrical stuff for the kitchen so we used vinyl tiles, sticky backed so an easy job and didn't cost a fortune. When we had a new kitchen a few years later and it had to come up, we were very glad it was an easy fix. It looks OK, not as nice as ceramic tiles of course but I can change it in a weekend if I get fed up of it

You need Ditra matting which goes under the flooring and effectively absorbs small amounts of unevenness or movement so the flooring itself is not affected

They sound incompetent. They should be able to use shims to get the floor level, then install cement board or exterior grade plywood over the whole surface, then tile.

I had gaps in my plank subfloor. I filled them in myself, by cutting small scraps of wood which were held in by a very sticky (but sandable) adhesive. Then I sanded it level when it was dry. However, these were small gaps. With bigger gaps you would have to do it from under the floor and install sheets of plywood on the underside, fill the gaps with leveler or wood strips first, then screed the whole thing.

I put wood on top of mine, but if I was doing tile I would use a leveler, then backer board or plywood. You could do wood if you wanted. As it is a kitchen, just make sure it has as many coats of finish as possible to avoid water damage. I'd do a minimum of three coats of oil based or five coats of water based. My kitchen floor is pine plank. It has seven coats of finish on it and has held up beautifully.

A good flooring contractor can certainly solve this problem. The one you have just sucks! Good luck.

Our floor is also part concrete part wood (the previously owners dug up random patches of the beautiful parquet flooring and filled it with concrete 😭).
We’ve been advised to either
a) rip up all the old wood, fill with concrete then put a DPM down & screed over it, then we can have what ever flooring we want
b) leave the floor as it is, and have a ‘floating floor’ (eg laminate or vinyl click) - this only works if the floor is nice and level though (no lumps & bumps)

Thanks everyone - taking this for discussion with DH now, so we can figure out a way forward.

The builder and the joiners are awful. Just awful. We've paid over £4K for a floor that will probably have to be lifted and chucked

You can probably reuse your lvt. It's designed to not be permanently stuck down providing they used the correct adhesive. Just peel it up and use waxed paper or polythene sheets for the sticky side. You could also scrape off any excess if too much has been used. Stack them somewhere out of they way. Providing you like the lvt obviously.
Lvt does need a perfect surface, it telegraphs any issues with the sub floor. But it's a lovely product once down if laid correctly.