I am at a job doing a basement and the client asked me about doing tile in the kitchen while I am there. No bigggie I figure.
It appears that the floor is 3/4 OSB. I would therefore need to add a 3/8 subfloor before laying the tile. The only way I can see doing this right is to remove the countertop and cabs and lay the subfloor in before reinstalling….otherwise it ends up with the dishwasher not fitting under the countertop and the stove sitting 1/2 above the countertop.
Is there a trick here? It’s gonna be one of three things…there’s a trick, I charge them out the wazoo for the amount of time this is going to take or I walk away and say I’m sorry.
Thoughts?
Mike O.
Replies
I don't believe there is an easy way to do the floor without removing all the cabinets, plumbing, and so forth. If it's an older kitchen you're probably going to open up a can of worms, especially in the plumbing department. A lot of old cabinets were built on site and are really difficult to remove and keep them intact. If the countertop has a backsplash attatched, that will probably break. You have to put down CBU or hardibacker for the tiles, so you have to remove the old floor down to the sub floor. If they willing to pay lots of money go for it otherwise I'd walk away. Sorry to be so negative but, you asked.
I'm not a kitchen specialist, but the guy who usually does my cabinets told me of a situation that sounds similar to yours;
He removed the old countertop and fitted a "riser" (for want of a better term) around the top of the cabinet frames and installed a new countertop. The floor guys took up the old flooring to the subfloor and built it back up w/tile as you describe, including in the dishwasher space.
Biggest problem for him was that a big kitchen window in front of the sink had to be replaced with a slightly shorter one to accomodate the backsplash.
just out of curiosity...have you checked the adjustable legs to see if they can be lowered that much?
a
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best thing to do if you can is to raise the countertop and leave the cabinets alone, then u can accomadte the dw and stove heights