Install Doors Before Or After Laminate Flooring

Floor covering or finish flooring is the surface that you see and walk on not the subfloor under the underlayment or underlayment between subfloor and finished layer.

Install doors before or after laminate flooring.

Since most new laminate flooring uses a click lock tongue and groove system you ll have to trim off with your saw the upper groove of the laminate plank that comes before the notched piece. Install the notched laminate. Those are all good reasons to lay a kitchen floor after the cabinets are in. Put all the base cabinets in place then mark a line on the subfloor corresponding to the front edge of the toekick.

If you go with carpet that has a pile i don t think it matters either way. After floors this would be a huge pain to do since you would need to pull the door out and saw the jamb. Also maybe others are more careful but i found it s hard not to ding the floor a little bit when doing doors afterwards. Now install the notched laminate planks in the doorway.

After removing the existing flooring baseboards and quarter moulding check that the subfloor is solid flat and clean. Before the floors go in you can easily shim one end of the jamb to get the door exactly plumb. This way you will not have to notch the flooring around or undercut the jamb or casing. But if you have to install the flooring first here s a method that will avoid some of the problems i just described.

The only issue i see installing it after would be you maybe having to trim the length of the jamb a little to fit the rough opening due to the increased height from the flooring. In most cases given standard flooring heights you will install the cabinets before the floor covering. Typically cabinets come before flooring.