If you're doing floor installation yourself and you're laying unfinished wood or tiles, there's a lot less cutting and piecing and it's faster if you can just lay and lay and lay without interference. And you can topfinish the room cleanly all the way to the walls, again without touchy little areas that need awkward kneeling and close vision and special attention. Also, you can more easily reconfigure the kitchen later--remove a portion of cabs and there's still an intact floor there. Hint from the sadder but wiser: If you're doing red oak and if you're sorting pieces beforehand so that you can isolate or omit the odd colored and wild grain ones and feature the calm ones in the major areas [I yanked out what I termed "clown" pieces to use up in the closet and under the cabs] be sure you have measured off the projected cab positions ten times over before you start. DH made a measuring error--didn't read the cab layout properly and figure how it related to the blueprint. I have three courses of clowns right in a prominent place and, naturally, some of the nicest boards are under the peninsula. It wasn't until the cabs were installed that I realized how my strategy had backfired. New Gel Mat covers it.

Celticmoon here to say: oh yeah!!! Looks great!!!!!!! I remain very happy with my 'temporary' stopgap gel stain job back in 2006. So happy that I have no thought to renovate my kitchen any further. It would be nice to have a prep sink or to get the DW away from the corner sink, but lookswise there is nothing I would like better than my creamy colored plain counters, dark cabinets and chunky shiney pulls. Never thought going into the cosmetic fix I'd be this happy for this long. Recently did my second touch up (garbage pull, snack cabinet and drink glass cabinet....hmmmmmm, interesting places to have wear) Enjoy!!! Especially the 'laughing all the way to the bank' part.

We had the oak flooring installed first (unfinished) and it was covered with a cardboard product (Ram Board) throughout the rest of the process. The cabinets, granite and appliances have been installed and all of the painting has been done. The GC has protected the cabinets after installation with panels of 1/2 foam, taped with painters tape and the panels have been removed only when work needs to be done on the cabinets (installation of appliance and knobs). The floor is now being stained and finished. There was no sign of damage to the unfinished floors. The cardboard, though, really took a beating and I'm glad that the floors were protected during construction.

Tina - given the expressed concerns about the condition of your floor and cracking, you may want to talk to your GC and/or Tile Guy about the deflection (the amount of bend/give) of your floor. If it has had wood and vinyl tile on it, it may not be able to support tile. To know this, you would need to know the type, size and spacing of your floor joists as well as the longest unsupported span. You'll also need to know the type and thickness of your subfloor. Floating will not help with deflection. The only things that would help are improving your joists and your subfloor. I went through this with our floor, unfortunately when it was too late to do the reconstruction needed. For me it worked out well, though, as we are winding up where I really wanted to be - with hardwood floors throughout our home. Here is a link that might be useful: Here's one calculator