Kitchen Cabinets Or Flooring First

Many people like to put in floors first to avoid having to cut the material around cabinets and appliances.

Kitchen cabinets or flooring first.

If you are among those that don t care for the task of cutting the flooring material around the framework of cabinets and appliances you would probably prefer to install the floors first. If you re the type that likes to shake things up you may want to install flooring first. In most cases given standard flooring heights you will install the cabinets before the floor covering. But if you are installing any type of floating floor where each piece is not directly attached to the floor you should install the cabinets first.

Floor covering or finish flooring is the surface that you see and walk on not the subfloor under the underlayment or underlayment between subfloor and finished layer. This is the main draw for those who start with floors. If you are going to put in a hardwood floor and it is a total of 1 1 2 and you want 4 toe kick then the kick should be 5 1 2 tall and the cabinets should be 37 1 2 tall from the concrete. Cabinets and appliances without flooring underneath are much harder to move.

Kitchen base cabinet install on top of flooring decision flooring goes in last. But if you have to install the flooring first here s a method that will avoid some of the problems i just described. If you foresee yourself craving layout change we advise you cover your kitchen in wall to wall flooring first. Accommodate for the flooring thickness in your toekicks.

If you have the choice it s usually easier to install the flooring first and then the cabinets. In fact this is a primary motivation for those who start from the ground up. Typically cabinets come before flooring. Remove the cabinets and screw a plywood filler piece to the subfloor about inch inside the line where it will be under the cabinets.

What s more some worry that by installing cabinets first it will be harder to switch them out in the future as you ll be stuck with the same cabinet footprint you had before. Find a showroom near you to start making your dream kitchen a reality today.