How do I bathroom / kitchen / extension? etc.

We've had some snags in our kitchen fitting that have led to interesting conversations with our builders/their kitchen fitter - could anyone share their opinions on the below please:

1 - we are going to have floating engineered oak herringbone flooring with the gold foil stuff underneath. Everywhere we've read about the flooring suggests it should go down last, so the kitchen legs are sat on the concrete floor, not the wood. The floor is currently a concrete slab with self-levelling screed over the top. The kitchen fitter (and now the builders) are saying that's wrong and that the flooring needs to be down for the kitchen to go over the top. Anyone got any experience on this please?

2 - we're having IKEA kitchen carcasses with plywood doors bought from elsewhere. Due to the lead times with the plywood doors/fillers/end plates we were planning on having the fitter fit the cupboards, worktop & appliances etc... now then we could just bolt the plywood on later. The fitter is saying this isn't possible as he needs the filler panels & everything to make the corners all fit properly - the plywood place say that's the not the case & that our plan would be fine, so not really sure who to believe on that one. Obviously the plywood place want the sale but maybe the fitter is uncomfortable with IKEA? Has anyone on here done similar?

Pretty frustrating on a few levels.

1. Can be done either way. Personally I like fitting kitchens onto the finished floor. If there’s integrated appliances that slide into a slot it’s almost impossible to get them back out if they drop down a lip into the gap. Obvs more expensive to floor under the units though.

2. Depends on the complexity and arrangement of end panels / corners. Got a plan? The bottom line with this one though, is that if the fitter doesn’t want to do it, you can’t make them.

If you change your kitchen layout in the future and expose the floor it’s nice to have a finished floor.

Kitchen fitter us possibly being lazy. If you lay after there is a chance the kick boards will need to be trimmed. Doesn't make any difference in reality but echo what @dbr says about moving appliances over a lip, it can be a right bitch (particularly the washing machine)

Fillers go between unit carcasses so don't see how you could fit a kitchen without them unless I'm missing something?

Thanks - image below of the kitchen, not using the colours shown that was more for ease of identifying pieces. Doors/drawfronts are all shown in wood, fillers and end panels in dark red. The plywood people don't think it's that complicated, just a little bit of joinery needed for the left hand corner as there's a downpipe there.

So maybe the flooring could do with being down, annoying timing as I don't really have the time to do it right now but may be possible.

I guess our options are; wait for the doors/fillers but not have a kitchen until ~Feb, don't get the plywood stuff and just order the doors/fillers from IKEA (I suggested this then removing the fillers later & replacing with ply but the fitter thinks that's not possible), or finding a different fitter than can come before christmas (unlikely but we're ringing round).

@davidual & @eskay - thanks too. I feel like the builders fitter is most of the issue but hard to say as this isn't really my game.

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Having had the job of fishing a large range cooker out of the drop created by fitting the floor after the units, I can heavily recommend finishing the entire floor before the units, or at least having a plan for how appliances can be retrieved without wrecking them and / or the floor.

at least having a plan for how appliances can be retrieved without wrecking them and / or the floor

Whoever did ours glued some wooden rails perpendicular to the front of the cabinets for appliance feet to slide up and down when you move them in/out. Seems to work well enough.

Its a very British thing to not have a full floor in Kitchens, not sure why, think the Euros tend to tile the whole place before fitting a kitchen just incase anything ever changes.

Its a very British thing to not have a full floor in Kitchens, not sure why

Maybe we were more likely to have to (or want to) pull the floor up and dick with it than pull the kitchen out and dick with it. Either way, it's not great in my view.

Ha, you could prob find the data on that to validate the assumption?

But yeah, agree, get it all done, and get the washing machine out of where you make food!

get the washing machine out of where you make food

This is another thing they do right in Euroland. As long as you aren't afraid of having a plug sockets in the bathroom it makes all the sense in the world to put the washing machine in there.

We tend to have click flooring with spongy underlay rather than a permanently tiled solution. Underlay would sink with heavy cabinets permanently fitted.

All I did was fit my flooring in the appliance apertures. It was only the fridge and dishwasher in my case.

BOOM, great insight, and yeah, imagine you are right as Euros tend to go for cooling natural tiles due to higher temps.

Cut a sliver out of my bathroom for just that use case, we had it in the under stairs cupboard before that, to hell with it in the kitchen!

This is what we're doing - floating engineered wood floor over sponge roll with the gold foil. Everywhere online (including the flooring shop) says lay up to the kitchen, not under. Though some of the reasons seem to be because the weight of the kitchen would stop the floor from being able to expand/contract properly.

Think we're just going to have to find our own kitchen fitter that's a bit more open to what we need. Sigh.

Maybe we can just cut a square of standard ply out for under the dishwasher as it's the only fitted appliance - fridge will be free standing (we'll have to put the flooring into it's space), washing machine is in a different room.

the Romanian fitters doing my exes kitchen tiled the whole floor without even asking

And prob ran the tiles up as skirting? That's quite an Eastern European thing which also makes sense.

why is it called a floating floor? cause it isn't stuck down and is held in place by being butted up against the edges of the room?

Yeah - not glued or nailed down. Just sits on top of the lining with a small expansion gap round the edge that gets covered by the skirting board/beading.

probably! I didn't look that closely

We have this and big ceramic tiles. Brilliant. I was back in UK and visited my brother who had laminate and it creeked and moved after only a few years. These tiles will outlive me.

IME Europeans don't seem to be perpetually redoing their kitchens like we do. So maybe there's they too.

Our tiles don't go all the way up and it's been a fucking nightmare for trying to fix the appliances. Even if you don't floor under the cabinets definitely have something water/rotproof to make your alliances floor level.

Yup floor was done first, wall to wall

Argh. More neighbour dramas, the ones who are ok are now trying to design our loft to make theirs better (crossing the party wall to act as insulation for theirs!).
I swear I’m the only rational person on this planet.
Looks like it’s going to be multiple cakes.
Tempted to run a sweepstakes if this will even happen.