In home construction, how are kitchen’s usually constructed?
For example, regarding hardwood floors…
Are the cabinets added to the subfloor, with the hardwood added around that?
Would it be different if it were linoleum (or tile)?
It would seem to me that when dealing with hardwood floors, you’d put the kitchen cabinets on the hardwood, whereas, it would seem with tile you’d put the cabinets in first.
What’s the conventional wisdom regarding floors and cabinets in kitchens?
E3
Why lay hardwood at ten bucks a foot under the cabinets?
Usually, expensive stuff like wood or tile is just laid up to the toekick of the cabinets. An equally thick section of wood will be set in the dishwasher space (exact location that this needs to be in will be specified by the dishwasher’s instalation instructions). The space for a slide-in or stand-alone range is usually finished with the same flooring. The cabinets might be installed on spacer strips of the same thickness of the finished floor.
Sheet flooring can be done either way. Either to the toe kick, and generally no compensation is needed for the dishwasher, or wall-to-wall before the cabinets go in. The benefit to doing it before the cabinets go in is purely in labor - no careful trimming or edge treatment is needed. Less time to install may equate to less money spent on labor.
To add to gotpasswords have added, if the flooring to be installed is more than 3/8" thick, the cabinets will be raised an appropriate amount to maintain a standard 42" counter height. And the footprint of the cabinets is laid out and the expensive flooring will overlap the edges of that footprint by about an inch. It is much easier and looks better to have the cabinets on the floor covering than to try to butt flooring up to the toekick. In the old days before premanufactured cabinetry, the flooring always went in first irregardless of the material.
IMHO, a good kitchen installation should always have the flooring go wall to wall. The floor supports the cabinets.
Counters are typically at 36", most cabinets are 34-1/2" in the US and 1-1/2" laminate or solid surface brings it to 36" If you go granite, you will get either 3cm which is 1-1/4" solid or 2cm with an extra 2cm built up front edge which brings you to 1-1/2".
One thing I have seen many times in shoddy installs is the contractor installs the cabinets and appliances, then installs a tile floor. Now you can’t be get your dishwasher out, it will be held in by the 1/2" of tile and thinset.
It’s not that much more expensive, it makes for a better installation, and what happens when you want to redo the layout 5 years later? You have to buy a whole new floor? eh.
The last step is for the carpenters to remove the apostrophe. 
In new kitchens:
Linoleum is often stretched, laid on the floor and the cabinets are set on top of it to hold it in place. If this is done, a few years later when the contractor grade flooring looks like crap, one can save money when replacing it, because they just cut around the cabinets and roll up the flooring, leaving the subflooring intact. If the linoleum was installed with glue, the subflooring may need to be removed and replaced. To make things look really finished, they add a strip of “quarter round” at the base of the cabinets. This also helps hold things in place- but is not needed if the linoleum is stretched and held in place by the cabinets.
All information in this post is based on information from when my mother had her kitchen floor replaced a couple of years ago. It may not be completely accurate.
Holy Crap, Where did that come from?
I promise, I knew better!
Here’s the deal,
I’m doing a few home improvements. I started pulling up carpet in my bedroom and hallways because I found there was a hardwood floor underneath. “Cool” says I. That is until I made the false assumption that there must be hardwood throughout the house. I pulled the carpet up in the living room, only to find brown linolium. that went from the living room and into, including the kitchen (it’s kind of a big open entrance from one room to the next). There is newer linolium placed on the older linoleum (which is why I can’t tell if the cabinets are placed on top of the older linolium or not. The newer linoleum is cut around the cabinets.) I guess I need to pull off a piece of the quarter round and pull the upper layer of linoleum back and have a looksee.
This is snowballing rapidly
Welcome to the wonderful world of home improvement!
And** MikeG**, for a ceramic tile floor, are you saying one should tile the entire room and then set cabinets on top of the tile?