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Moving Cabinets to Install New Kitchen Flooring?

16 years ago

I have a question for the group. I have an older home, 1930s cottagy style. The kitchen has been updated, so I have newish cabinets. During the update, the owners pulled up the existing flooring in the kitchen and found heart pine subflooring. Which they thought was pretty enough to use as the floor. So they simply PVCd it and let it be.

The problem is that the floor, although beautiful in spots, has some pretty nasty looking water damage (dark black spots) and some holes that have been wood puttied shut. If you pop out the putty, you can see the basement. I think it looks pretty dingy, considering the rest of the kitchen.

So, I am thinking about getting it refloored and am leaning towards tile or slate. But I don't know what to tell the installer.

1. Do I want the subfloor-now-top-floor pulled up or can it be demoted back to subfloor status? (Even though the black spots are ugly, they seem to be pretty solid).

2. Will the cabinets have to be removed to put in a new floor?

3. What other issues am I not considering?

Any comments welcomed!

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Comments (3)

Shannon01
16 years ago
I am no professional but if you need a new subfloor, sounds like the cabinets would have to come up. If you can tile on this current floor, no need to remove the cabinets, you will use a piece of trim along the bottom of the cabinets to blend to the tile so it will have a finished look.
rogerv_gw
16 years ago
I sure wouldn't want to pull up cabinets, there's a lot of potential for damage to them and your countertops if you do that. If you use your current floor (which used to be a subfloor) as a subfloor again (which would be what I'd be hoping for), then you could just put in new floor up to your cabinets, that's very commonly done.

However, you have a different challenge for tile or stone, in that you have to make sure that your floor can handle the weight of the tile or stone without moving. You can compute that based on how thick the wood is and how it is supported. If you have to add a new subfloor to support the tile, then the height of your floor relative to the cabinets (will make your cabinets seem shorter) might be too much.

You might consider other flooring than tile or stone if you have to add subfloor to support them, like linoleum or vinyl, laminate, cork or hardwood, and so on, there are lots of flooring choices out there that would require little or no added subfloor.

But be sure you understand what you're getting into from the outset, it would be sad to install tile and then find that your subfloor isn't substantial enough.

However, one of my parameters would be not removing the cabinets unless I was financially ready for a more major remodel.

-Roger
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jerry_t
16 years ago
Cindyb, pick something else out unless you are willing to invest a considerable amount of money here. Tile or a natural stone cannot be set directly over top a plank board subfloor. You either have to replace the planks with a new plywood subfloor or, add a minimum 1/2" BC grade plywood underlayment over top the plank decking.

After that is determined you would then use either a cement backer board or Ditra membrane over the new plywood... then you could tile if your joisting is stout enough.

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