LESLIE: Jim in South Carolina needs some help with a kitchen flooring project. What’s going on at your money pit?
JIM: Well, greetings. I’m contemplating putting some tile down in our kitchen.
TOM: OK.
JIM: In my rough guesstimation, with my backer board I’m going to use under the tile and then my grout and then the tile, I don’t feel like I’m going to have enough clearance under my dishwasher. It’ll bottom out against my countertop.
TOM: Right.
JIM: And if I just tile up to the dishwasher and then the dishwasher dies on me, what’ll I do; take the countertop off?
LESLIE: (overlapping voices) How are you going to get it out?
TOM: And therein lies the problem and the solution.
LESLIE: (overlapping voices) Which Tom had to do. (laughs)
TOM: Yeah, I actually had to do that, Jim, for my sister. She bought a house that had the tile right up to the front edge of the dishwasher and, of course, her dishwasher did eventually go and that was the only way we were able to get it out. So we were able to take the Formica countertop off but I mean if it had been Corian or solid-surface material or something like that, then we would have been chiseling out that floor, which would have been a big, stinking mess. So the point is that whenever possible, you do want to tile under the dishwasher but, as you have wisely calculated, you need to make sure that you have enough room left to get that dishwasher in there.
Now what kind of flooring is on there right now and is there any opportunity to lower it?
JIM: No, it’s a regular plywood floor with just some raggedy linoleum over it.
TOM: Well, you know it seems to me that you might have enough space then because, generally, you can put a floor that’s about an inch thick down and still have room for the dishwasher. So I would remove the kick plate off of the front of the dishwasher and see how much adjustment you have left there.
LESLIE: Yeah, how much clearance do those adjustable legs give you?
TOM: And you can actually …
JIM: About an eighth of an inch.
TOM: Well, you know you can actually unscrew the legs off the dishwasher …
LESLIE: And drop it down.
TOM: … and just set it right back on top of the frame. Yeah.
JIM: OK. OK. Well, keep your fingers crossed for me. (laughs)
TOM: We’ll do that. We’ll do that. Jim, thanks so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT. 888-666-3974.
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