Search

Old Laminate Stuck Under Cabinetry

sales91140
Jun 30, 2016
2 min read

Floating floors should NOT be installed underneath cabinetry, but rather, up to it. Wood will expand and contract with temperature and humidity changes throughout the seasons, a floating floor relies on its locking system to keep the planks together. You are much less likely to get gaps between your locking floor boards than you would with nail-down floor boards. Floating floors will still expand and contract, but as a whole--the difference between the seasons can only be seen if you lift up your baseboards.

Installing cabinetry over your floating floors means that you are pinching it in place, and preventing it from freely expanding and contracting. So when seasonal changes start to pull/push on the flooring, the locks are stressed because it cannot move freely.

Hence, we always recommend customers to install their floating floors AFTER their cabinetry has already been installed.

Another issue is that you end up with flooring stuck underneath the cabinetry, making it hard to replace. Here's an example of what we're talking about from a job in Lehi, UT 2 weeks ago:

The customer removed most of the old laminate themselves, but were stuck with the planks caught beneath the cabinetry.

Our installers came in and removed them by cutting closely and carefully around each cabinets.

After ensuring the subfloor has been prepped and cleaned, we laid it with the new laminate. The customer chose our 12.3mm laminate SXM-992 Grey Oak. Here's what it looks like afterwards: