Side, the drawing is a little off - the door actually clears the toilet by about 1.5". :) It's a New York bathroom! Anyway, thanks Bill - I realize this is something the tile guy/contractor should do but in my case, I am responsible for buying all the materials and such, and he's just going to do the actual work, so I'm measuring for myself. There is no tub deck. The contractor is going to build a wall for alcove installation - hopefully it will be a knee wall with glass above, if I can afford the glass. If not, it'll be a full wall, which will of course require more tile. Thank you for the measurements - I'm not quite sure what you mean by bullnose on the 3" side. Does that mean that each outer corner will need to have bullnosed tile all the way up and down? That's what I assumed but I wasn't sure. Inner corners don't require anything special, right? Thanks for your help!

Mine have 1.25" between the cabinet and top of washer. That's just how it happened to work out. As Dave mentioned there should be specs on how much clearance, as they install units under countertops. You can shop for units that will fit or if you have one you specifically want, just build a custom pedestal to the height you need. My cabinet measures 53" and what I did was find an actual set sitting on the pedestals and measured the units. It seems like when they attach the pedestals there is also some leeway since they remove the washers feet to attach the pedestal. And like you I was getting very little clearance when I would add the numbers. So I wanted to be sure they would actually fit. I've been using FL for decades with no issues so I would never go back. The only issue I have is when I forget to push the button to turn it on! I seem to have the same issue with the dishwasher. So even though we have some of the best and easiest supplied water in our area, we also have high water rates. With the Feds putting stricker regulations on our water supply I can only foresee the rates continuing to rise. Personally, I feel my FL washes better plus I don't have to spend extra money for water and sewer. So I would not recommend buying a top loader for that reason, or if you have a septic system. This post was edited by housefairy on Sun, Dec 8, 13 at 15:14

Rule of thumb is that a dining chair or stool takes up 2 square feet just for the chair. Add another foot either direction for average size knees and elbows. So that's 3 square feet. You need push back space and walking space. That's nine feet just for that aisle. You can obviously compact this by pushing chairs and knees under, but if you look at a lot of those nice magazines they have these huge kitchens that actually have that. Will you be using the slider a lot? Assuming yes, 127" - 35" = 92" for both aisles. If you give the slider side 3.5' = 42" which is enough for someone to get by if there are seated people, that leaves 50" for the other aisle. It'll be mighty tight if big people are seated on both sides. If it's an either or it should be fine. You might think about getting pedestals instead of legs, or even stretcher bars on the legs, so that they don't get tangled easily. I think you can get away with your three inch curve, but I probably would leave it straight so as not to have even a little bit of a pinch point.

Thanks rhome, I found it. This seems to be the only brand that actually has them posted. 3 inches would be ok behind a door but we are not going to have that much space available for it. Here are the results of my investigation so far regarding the other brands: GE customer service told me again that they are not authorized to discuss this installation as it is not approved (meanwhile I have a magazine right in front of me with several kitchens showing the same ge spacemaker m/w in a cabinet without a trim kit and minimal clearance, go figure) KitchenAid and Sharp customer service both said sure, it is ok, just keep a small gap. They also proceeded to explain that if there is not enough clearance, the m/w will overheat and shut down and we will not be able to use it until it cools off. But when I tried to get them to tell me the exact clearance required for that not to happen, the answer was to "use your common sense". That is great but if I am going to order custom cabinets based on my common sense alone and it fails me that wouldn't be very good, would it? So the choices are: install it anyway and hope for the best, forget the looks and use a trim kit or hide it behind a door and use small enough m/w that this is not an issue. Oh my, decisions, decisions...