Building a Kitchen on a moving floor

[S Almond]

I've installed a Wickes flat-pack kitchen in our 1930's house. The kitchen units are screwed to the wall with the flimsy brackets provided but much of the weight's on the 6" adjustable legs. The floor joists are 2"x4" at 16" centres and span about 10'. The washing machine's shaking has worked the screws in the brackets loose and now they squeak something terrible when people walk by. I can reach to loosen them - which means the units shake visibly when people walk by - but can't reach to tighten the loose screw(s).

What do I do?

A friend suggested taking the units out and hanging them off the wall. Has anyone tried this? How? How about stiffening the floor? The room's about 12' the other way.

[dom]

Your joist size sounds barely adequate. But I guess unless there's some easy way to access the underfloor space in your kitchen (cellar?), stiffening the joists by screwing timbers to the side of them would be difficult. Would it be practical (i.e. the level change would be inobtrusive) to add 18mm ply over the floorboards to stiffen the floor?

[Steve Walker]

My thoughts also - to minimise the appearance issues either just do under the units, or else do the whole floor to the same level

[meow2222]

With a washing machine on a floor like that I'm surprised you dont hit your head on the ceiling every time it spins. Thats one lousy floor. I'd fix as much as poss to the walls, unless the walls are even worse. Normally theres no need to remove any units to do this, just use, what are they called, the white rectangular plastic fixing blocks to fix the structure of the cabinets to the walls.

If you own the house I'd also consider doing something about the floor. If you can spare 2" in height, adding 2" wood to the top of the 4" joists would really help. If you have proper access underneath, adding

2" - 4" to the underside would work. Noggins would stiffen it too. Adding wood to the side would also stiffen it, but would use more wood per strength gain that the other 2 methods. Finally 18mm ply flooring screwed every 6" would create a stressed box construction.

NT

[The Natural Philosopher]

Oh get a huhge supply of expanding foam and lest it loose underneath them.

At least that way if you ever replace them you will be forced to do what you should have done before, that is stabilise the floor before you put the cabinets in.