Wood floor - chicken or egg type question!

Hi, another newbie here with possibly a stupid question!

We are in the process of renovating our house and I'm wondering what order to do things in...

We want to put down a new wood floor in the whole of our downstairs, including kitchen. I was planning to do this last, after all the building work and decoration has finished (previous primer spillage incident on newly sanded floor still a painful memory).

However, we are getting a new kitchen fitted and I don't know how it would work with laying the floor after this has been done. My main concern is clearance between top of appliances and the underside of the worktops, particularly as think we will need to lay ply and possibly underlay on top of existing wooden floorboards? (will probably go for engineered flooring and want the slats to run same way as current floorboards which are not entirely level).

Current clearance between top of dishwasher and worktop is only about 10mm and we're keeping the dishwasher!

Is there a way around this e.g. shaving underside of worktop or something or should we be laying the floor before the kitchen goes in and trying to protect it during rest of renovation? Or third option do we get worktops put in a bit higher and then adjust height of cabinet legs when new floor goes in - in which case how much clearance will we need?

Thanks for any advice!

Bibimac

Unless you want to cover the whole floor (which is not necessary) decide on your flooring and have your kitchen installed with the levels in mind. In other words allow for the floor and set your heights accordingly. Have your floor installed after the kitchen. If you decide to install it first then you will have to prrotect it well whilst the kitchen is done. I've started blogging this sort of stuff on wood floor designs.blogspot.com.

The average clearance for a worktop from subfloor is 900mm, which comfortably accomodates all appliances (all of which should have adjustable feet, but not all have, so check before you buy)
If you need to ply your floor (which you will if you are laying new floor in the dame direction) the ply should be 6mm minimum, maybe up to 12mm if your subfloor is really uneven.
Add this figure to the thickness of the new flooring and you have your clearance. Ask your kitchen fitter to accommodate for this when fitting units and worktop. If your appliances are "not" built in then your flooring will be fitted underneath them, so correct clearance is essential..

As a rule of thumb your worktop height should be @ 925mm (measured to the top of the worktop) before the new floor is installed. but check your measurements..

Thanks very much for the replies.

As our dishwasher doesn't have adjustable feet, I'm planning to go with getting the worktops fitted higher than current to allow sufficient clearance once the new floor is fitted.

At the momment the worktops are at 900mm to the top surface, leaving 10mm clearance above the dishwasher.

So allowing for plywood of up to 12mm and engineered wood flooring of up to 20mm (think this is the thickest it gets?) - I reckon the worktops need to be at a height of 925-930 mm to be safe (as long as the new worktops are the same thickness as the current ones!).

If I've got that wrong - please anyone feel free to correct me!

thanks again
Bibi