Engineered floors and kitchen reno

Discussion in 'Renovation & Home Improvement' started by hillsguy, 2nd Apr, 2017.

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  1. hillsguy

    hillsguy Well-Known Member

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    Hi all, looking at putting a new kitchen into our PPOR shortly.

    I am ideally wanting to put engineered wooded floors (not cheap ones but good solid ones) across kitchen upon removal of old kitchen. Then have new kitchen fitted on top.

    This avoids having the ugly looking beading all around kitchen cabinets.

    A few people mentioned it's crazy to do this as floor moves and it will buckle.

    I am wanting to hear if anyone has done / seen any kitchens on top of engineered wooden flooring ? If so any issues before I get onto this project ?

    Thanks heaps for any input ....
     
  2. D.T.

    D.T. Specialist Property Manager Business Member

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    Yea best practice is kitchen first and floors after , I'm doing 2 of these for my own properties at the moment and 1 for a client's too.

    Timber flooring can swell and move and buckle. If this is underneath stuff that can cause an issue.

    Perhaps looking into flooring with different characteristics?
     
  3. hillsguy

    hillsguy Well-Known Member

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    Thanks ! flooring with different characteristics??? What are you thinking ?
     
  4. DaveM

    DaveM Well-Known Member

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    Kitchen in first, lay timber flooring to under the line of the cabinets, install kicks over the top to allow for expansion.

    Engineered timber (the good stuff anyway) is built on 3 layers of backing timber of various densities laminated at 90 degrees to stop cupping and buckling, but still will get damaged with lots of water which is not mopped up quickly.

    Consider laminate or vinyl planks if for an IP
     
  5. hillsguy

    hillsguy Well-Known Member

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    It's an IKEA kitchen so will be challenging to cut kickboards and adjust as they are made EXACTLY to order.

    What should be my concern if we are careful with water ? The expansion ? It's for a ground floor double brick place on a concrete slab. Shouldn't move right ?
     
  6. bunkai

    bunkai Well-Known Member

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    Agree with this. Your cabinets are on legs. Make sure they are high enough (and located) to account for the engineered floor and the kick boards (normally 100mm). Then run the floor up to the legs. Install the kickboard after. But see below...

    I would just put the kitchen on top of the engineered floor personally. So much easier.
     
  7. DaveM

    DaveM Well-Known Member

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    Timber expands and contracts with heat/cooling plus humidity. There need to be expansion allowances around the perimeter of room plus often an expansion joint in large areas
     
  8. Gav

    Gav Well-Known Member

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    We just had our PPOR renovated, we put our kitchen on top of the engineered flooring. We did not allow for an expansion gap between kitchen/lounge, so had some buckling of the boards, but that has all been sorted now, and looking good. Sydney has had some amazing humidity as well with all the rain, so good that it happened while builder was still around, was pretty annoying at the time.
    Not sure if I would do the same second time round, if you do just make sure as was said above you have sufficient expansion joints around walls, and also between rooms
     
  9. mcarthur

    mcarthur Well-Known Member

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    Done a floating bamboo floor for PPOR and new IKEA kitchen. Lots of different opinions online of kitchen first then floor, or floor first then kitchen.
    The concensus seemed to be that IF you are having legs under your benches then you could do it either way as the legs should not prevent floor expansion/contraction. But safest would be bench cupboards first, then floor, then kickboard modified to cover floor expansion joint. We're doing this and modifying our Ikea kitchen to suit - easy to raise the legs so that the kickboards are 16mm higher than the substrate before the floating floor.
    If you have an island bench, then you can't put the floorboards first - the island bench almost always has electrical or plumbing through the floor which can't float. Island bench first, the floating floors upto the edge, preferably under the kickboards again.