Engineered parquet in kitchen?

[pacific407]

Does anyone have experience of putting engineered parquet in a kitchen? I've seen this gorgeous floor that I love - it's chevron parquet but it's engineered wood rather than hard wood. But because it's parquet I'm told it has to be bonded to the floor rather than "floating" (which would be the case if the planks were straight).

The guy that's building our kitchen says that they usually sit the kitchens on top of a floor (rather than lay the floor around the kitchen). I understand this is to do with aesthetics but also because of height issues. The one and only renovation I have done up to now, the floor went down after the kitchen, but that's possibly because it was tile and therefore "floating" (I think!! I'm not actually really sure what that means if I'm honest!)

Does anyone have any experience of this/tips/pointers/horror stories?

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@LittleOverwhelmed this is great info, thanks! Pretty much accords with what I've been reading.

Our room is about 85 metres squared, so I imagine that means it would be sensible in any event to go with sticking the floor down.

Has anyone mentioned to you concerns around the weight of the kitchen being an issue on top of the flooring? Someone said something along those lines to me, but tbh as I can't see myself ever wanting to change my kitchen's footprint I'm working on the basis that damage under the units/island don't matter anyway, but don't know if I'm missing something.

Also, what do you mean by "depth" and "spot repaired" with an oiled floor? I think the one we're looking at is oiled. Sorry if I'm being dense!!

I think it depends if you are having a new kitchen too. We had an engineered floor put down (not parquet) but the kitchen was already in place. In our situation taking the kitchen out to install the floor under it would have created a different set of problems e.g. tiled splash back, water pipes etc.
The flooring people also said there was little point in putting an expensive floor under units. We have a free standing fridge freezer but they extended the floor into that recess. The only 'step' is where the dish washer is but so far that hasn't been an issue and it is no more than two centimetres .

@TwoLeftSocksWithHoles yes that makes sense. We’re getting a new kitchen, too.

@LittleOverwhelmed we’re in Norfolk.

That’s all great info, thank you!!

@TwoLeftSocksWithHoles

I think it depends if you are having a new kitchen too. We had an engineered floor put down (not parquet) but the kitchen was already in place. In our situation taking the kitchen out to install the floor under it would have created a different set of problems e.g. tiled splash back, water pipes etc. The flooring people also said there was little point in putting an expensive floor under units. We have a free standing fridge freezer but they extended the floor into that recess. The only 'step' is where the dish washer is but so far that hasn't been an issue and it is no more than two centimetres .

Same.

They took the white goods out and floored under them so no step. I've just changed the washing machine and had no issue, though I did measure the space carefully knowing the new flooring had made it a bit shallower.

I came on to read the thread as I wondered why you were keeping a parakeet in your kitchen I really must read things properly!

@nopenotplaying an engineered parakeet, too!!

We have engineered parquet flooring in our living room, we always get a lot of compliments about it. It's not the easiest thing to keep looking great without scratching. It will get a bit battered but I think that adds to the character.

Ours is oiled finished and not tumbled. If I was having it in my kitchen I'd probably go for lacquered and tumbled, so that it's more hardy and any dents/damage blend in a bit better.

Make sure you check the wood thickness, so you know how many times you can sand it down and refinish it. We paid a bit extra for something that had enough thickness to be sanded down and refinished twice in its lifetime.

@zzzebra thank you for this. How will I know if I can refinish etc? The one I'm looking at is 15mm with a 4mm top layer of oak...

We're going for oiled, because it looks so much nicer and because it's through the kitchen/diner/living room. If it had just been the kitchen I might have gone lacquered. Fingers crossed! But I agree I think general wear and tear looks nice on a wooden floor.

[quote pacific407]@zzzebra thank you for this. How will I know if I can refinish etc? The one I'm looking at is 15mm with a 4mm top layer of oak...

We're going for oiled, because it looks so much nicer and because it's through the kitchen/diner/living room. If it had just been the kitchen I might have gone lacquered. Fingers crossed! But I agree I think general wear and tear looks nice on a wooden floor.[/quote]
I think 4mm can be refinished once, we went for 6mm in the end as it can be refinished 2-3 times.

That said our neighbours floor is 15-20 years old and in the entrance hall so gets a lot of footfall. Looks lovely and worn in, has been re-oiled a few times but never sanded. I think it's solid though.

Word of warning from the bitter voice of experience. If you run it under your fitted kitchen and the floor takes any substantial damage you’ll have to rip out the kitchen to repair the floor... my darling children smashed into the radiator in our open plan kitchen extension and broke the pipe inside the wall behind it... leak resulted in water under the oiled oak parquet which the insurance loss adjusters have been wrangling with the insurance company over. The floor will cost over 5 k to replace, if we hadn’t listened to the very lovely floor fitter who told us to fit the kitchen first and he’d fit the floor to the units we’d be having to argue the cost of ripping out 20k of kitchen as well as the floor and all the upheaval that would entail. The floor we have was perfect and just ran off under the kick boards, you’d think it was right to the wall looking at it.

We also have friends who did their extension at the same time and laid their floor wall to wall and set the kitchen ontop. Their floor expanded and sections popped up as there was no room for expansion and they had to in the end get it all nailed down which ruined the finish.

@Hexinthecity thank you so much for this. This is something I'm toying with at the moment - kitchen designer says floor down everywhere and kitchen on top. I'm wondering about that for the reasons you say.

I used to work for a company who sold and installed wooden flooring. I'd have said what hex in the city said.... Why install expensive flooring under cupboards.
The reason the kitchen fitter is saying not to, is that it makes their job a little more complex in that they should fit the kickboards to the units after the flooring is laid, so they'll have to come back. We would've advised that any free standing appliances would have flooring run under so that they can be removed/ replaced as necessary, but that built in units are fitted, then flooring run a little under and then kickboards fitted last.
Because they're engineered you won't have the expansion problem mentioned above but it will also mean floor repair will be easier if needed in a specific area.

@pacific407 no worries glad to be of help. We were confused as to the two very different approaches when we were doing our extension and both sides of the argument seemed to be so vehemently disagreed with by the opposing side! At one point we had our builders and kitchen gutters nearly losing the rag at each other over it! So glad we fitted the floor to the kitchen (which was the floor fitters advice and didn’t listen the to kitchen fitters. I have to say it originally made more sense to me to lay it floor to floor and set the kitchen on top but then the floor fitter pointed out that even if in 15 or 20 years time we wanted to replace the kitchen without replacing the floor when we moved the island the wood under it would be a totally different colour and texture as it wouldn’t have been exposed to the same wear and tear and light exposure etc.

@Hexinthecity that's exactly what my builder said to me last night - tbh i'm more likely to want to replace the floor than the kitchen (kitchen is about 5 times more expensive!!) so it's starting to make sense to fit the floor around.