What came first the Engineered Wood Flooring or the Kitchen

[Jamse1980]

Hi all

We live in a first floor Victorian flat and are having a new kitchen installed and have opted to go for 21mm engineered wood flooring. Wood flooring suppliers advised laying flooring across the whole room and then installing the kitchen on top. Builder is advising the opposite, fit kitchen and then lay the flooring.

Other issue is that we are having an integrated washing machine and dishwasher installed. Should they sit on the engineered flooring or on plywood of the same height screwed to the base flooring. We have previously had a washing machine sitting on laminate flooring and the whole house seemed to shake. The flooring supplier advised that with this thickness of flooring and across the whole room vibration will be minimal. In all honesty if engineered wood flooring across the whole room is the least noisy then the cost of it would be worth it, if only to save on dentist bills from the fillings falling out. It’s very unlikely that when you came to redoing the kitchen at a later stage you would bother changing the layout so it would not be an issue if the flooring did not cover the whole floor as you just use the same 'L' shaped layout.

Any help would be great and apologises in advance if this has been covered extensively in the past!

Cheers

James

 

[jrh14]

Hello,
Whenever you are renovating and are laying a new floor at the same time, I ALWAYS lay the flooring first.
The reason for this is quite simple. Firstly the cost of laying tiles, hardwood or engineered wood under the cabinets is minimal and secondly if in the future you decide to replace an item such as a washer or dishwasher it's a simple process of removing one and replacing it without having to worry about the flooring.
I hope this help? Have a great day.

 

[crazydaze]

You should never install a Kitchen on top of a floating floor!!

The Kitchen should always be installed first, the floor can then be fitted, end boards, kick boards etc can all be trimmed to suit the height of the floor afterwards.

The main reason to fit the floor last, is if you fit the Kitchen on top of the floor, you will restrict the expansion and contraction of the floor, this will result in the floor bubbling etc.

There is one exception, and that is, if you fit the floor first, the Kitchen units etc could be fitted 'through' the Engineered flooring by using a large hole saw to cut big discs out of the floor so that the feet pass through to the subfloor underneath.

If the kitchen is directly fixed to the subfloor and walls, it will be very sturdy, fitting onto a 'movable' surface is asking for trouble.

It's very unusual in my experience for the builder to get the flooring advice right, and an 'expert' wrong, in this case, the flooring supplier is giving out bad advice.

 

[Jamse1980]

Crazy Dave and JRH thanks very much for the advice.