As a cabinet installer, I prefer installing the flooring last. The reason for this is quite simple. Very few installations floors are level. By installing the bases first, with build up on the bottoms of the bases approx 1/4 inch less than the thickness of the finished floor we can install our toekick, along with any shims to have a level base run. Doing it this way generally doesn't require using a base moulding with the toekick unless the floors are way out of level.

I looked into this in many ways myself, and I think if you asked 10 people, you could easily have 5 in each camp of floors vs cabinets first.

What will your floor be? Floating floors are not supposed to go under cabinets. (Ie, lots of laminates and woods). I also cannot think of any reason to have vinyl, amtico, or any other sheet product run under cabinets.

I have heard the argument that it makes sense to do tile first for two reasons: 1) Depending on layout, the money saved NOT putting tile under the cabinets can sometimes be offset by the extra cutting/layout, etc needed if you install the tile around cabinets, and 2) if it is a high quality tile floor, you may want to save it if the room is remodeled in the future, so wall to wall tile makes more sense.

I think a lot of cabinet installers want to put the cabinets in first, so they dont have to worry about protecting your new floor, and floor guys may want to do the floor first, as it is easier to cover the whole floor than to work around the cabinet layout!

Personally, my cabinets went in first and then I installed the floating laminate floor myself.

My kitchen floor was installed on Friday...

{{!gwi}}

Cabinets are being delivered tomorrow (Monday), and installed on Wednesday/Thursday...

We're having our hardwood floors refinished, and most of it is being done before our new cabinets go in. I was told this is because it's harder to stain and sand up to the edge of the cabinets. However, the final coat of poly won't go on until after all the cabinets and appliances are in and the rest of the work is done.

My floor is going to be wide-plank walnut.

I see what you mean about different people having different views on this. I spoke with my flooring person today and he said, basically, that it doesn't make much difference to him except that when he gets under the edge of the cabinet, he cannot use the air nailer to blind nail-- so it may be a little more work to hand nail in these places. In my case, my wide planks are being face nailed anyway, so it is no big deal for me either.

I will probably go the route of cabinets first if for no other reason than it saves me the worry about what the cabinet installers may do to my new floor.

When we did our kitchen, we had tile put in first. Within a few weeks, tile started cracking, grout was coming up, etc. A real mess. we now need to take up the entire floor, which means removing all the counters, cabinets, and appliances to do it right. So just from my experience, I would say if you're doing tile, put it in after the cabinets are installed. Sure would have saved us alot of money and time.

That's a purty kitchen, twobengals! I don't think I've seen that before! Nice warm wood, and great backsplash!

So how does it work when you install the cabinets first? Do you put the base cabinets directly on the subfloor? Or do you build up the subfloor with a layer of plywood? My floors are not level--they have a discernable slope--will that make a difference in the decision?

Yeah so its all really about the history of carpentry. I worked for a restoration company in st Augustine FL restoring old homes. Most homes there if you look in the cabinets have the solid wood floors going through. The reason for this was they didn't use an underlayment like we do now with plywood. All they had were yellow pine planks if that. The other part of it is they didn't have running water plumbed in to their homes. The advantages of the flooring under the cabinets is you will have spare pieces to take from if needed after many long years. disadvantages are for remodeling. Your brand new floor can get scratched and it takes longer to install cabinets if you have to walk on egg shells.

Our GC installs the floors first, stains and does one top coat, then does the cabinets and any final work. At the very end they look for any flooring areas that may have gotten dinged during cabinet install, fix and do final top coat.

One thing I will say is if you install cabinets first then if you ever want to make a footprint change down the road you may have to change the floor. You won't necessarily be able to remove a peninsula or something like that and match the floor from the rest of the kitchen in the old peninsula space.