Installing wooden floor around an existing fitted kitchen.

[gareth75]

Hi, I'm looking for some advice and have found these forums very helpful in the past.
I'm currently planning to lay new flooring throughout the downstairs of a 1960's house. I have started to remove the old parquet flooring which has revealed a thick layer of bitumen and what looks like some sort of felty backing from the parquet. Originally the plan was to remove this using a two part stripper and then have a glued down smoked oak floor. However the wood I ordered was delivered and bore no resemblance to what I had chosen ( not just natural variation, it looked awful, each plank had areas that were smoked and then areas that looked completely untreated) I refused delivery and have now taken the opportunity to reassess. The new plan is to have an engineered maple floor which will also go through into the kitchen. This raises two new issues that I'd appreciate some help with.
Firstly the bitumen is obviously still there, with a floating engineered floor can I just put an underlay with DPM on top of it without removing it all? It's quite level and stable.
Secondly as I said I now plan to run the flooring through into the kitchen, however although I plan to replace this in the future I can't afford to do this now. What I'd like to do is lay the flooring right underneath all the units up to the wall so when replacing the kitchen I'm not restricted to the current layout.
Is this
1. possible and
2. practical?
The units all have adjustable legs on them so I'm hoping to be able to shorten them and slide the floor underneath without having to remove all the units.
Any advice from someone who's done a similar job would be much appreciated.
Gareth

 

[Screwed]

Hi,

I'm not an expert and have no idea what the correct answer is regarding putting a kitchen on top of a floor but.........I think I am right in saying that you shouldn't put the units on top of real wood as it moves - engineered flooring would be better.

How are you going to lift your existing units to get the floor under them anyway? Do you have integrated appliances??

Sorry for not helping but hopefully this will gee on those that know!!!

 

[gareth75]

Thanks for that. The floor is engineered wood. I've checked under the units and the current laminate is under the legs, as they are all adjustable I'm hoping I can just shorten them slightly and slide the wood, which is T&G underneath, just going plank by plank. There's no integrated appliances, just a freestanding dishwasher and there's about 35mm between this and the worktop so the extra hight shouldn't cause any issues.
Hope you're right about kickstarting the replies!


Gareth