LESLIE: Mike in North Dakota, you’ve got The Money Pit. How can we help you today?
MIKE: Hi. How are you guys doing?
TOM: We’re well.
LESLIE: We’re great. So you’re working on a flooring project?
MIKE: Well, no, not yet. I’m not much of a handyman but – say, my wife and I bought a condo about a year ago and it’s got linoleum flooring in it, which is nice, but we’re wanting to put some laminate down in our kitchen.
TOM and LESLIE: OK.
MIKE: And one of the things I read that you need to consider is if you have any appliances that are underneath the countertop, that installing the laminate isn’t going to interfere with that?
And our dishwasher is right snug up against the bottom of the countertop, so if we put anything underneath that, you know, it’s not going to – or if we just …
TOM: Yeah, that’s going to be a problem. Yeah.
MIKE: Yeah.
TOM: So what kind of flooring do you have down now?
MIKE: It’s just linoleum.
TOM: OK.
LESLIE: OK. Now, Tom, how much play does adjusting the feet on the dishwasher give you?
TOM: Yeah, that’s what I was thinking. You should have at least an inch of play in the feet of the dishwasher.
LESLIE: And the laminate’s going to be about three-quarters, correct?
TOM: Less than that.
LESLIE: Less than …
TOM: Probably less than a half.
LESLIE: Because, Mike, what you would do is before you start your flooring project, you would pull the dishwasher out, floor underneath it and then you’ll see on the bottom of all appliances – ovens, dishwashers – there’s some feet that sort of screw in and out to adjust the height. And then you would just drop it down all the way and slide it back in. And that should give you enough clearance.
But before you start anything, you might want to just disconnect that dishwasher for a hot second, pull it out and see how much adjustability there actually is there. You don’t know what kind of position it’s already set in. You may have way more clearance than you think.
MIKE: If I don’t – what if I don’t have enough clearance?
LESLIE: Well, Tom has dealt with the crazy, floored-in dishwasher situation before, which is never fun.
TOM: Yeah. What kind of countertop do you have?
MIKE: Well, it’s not granite, if that tells you anything. I guess I’m not sure what it …
TOM: Is it laminate?
MIKE: Yeah.
TOM: Well, look, you can pull the top off and drop the dishwasher in from the top, if you had problems getting it in and out.
MIKE: OK.
TOM: But if you – but if this is the original floor and it’s a vinyl floor – so you don’t have multiple layers there – it would be very unusual that you can’t adjust this dishwasher down.
MIKE: Yeah.
TOM: I mean they all look like they’re up close to the top but they almost always have an inch of space on those legs.
MIKE: Sure.
TOM: So, you need to take off the control panel on the bottom and take a look. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.
MIKE: Awesome. That’d be – I had – I didn’t even think of that, so appreciate it very much.
TOM: Alright. Well and – but you thought to call us and that was the right thing to do.
MIKE: Thank you.
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