Floor first. All of the cabinets have to sit at finished floor height. The easiest way is to sit them on top of the finished floor. And the floor thickness has to be accounted for in the overall kitchen design. It affects everything.

Cal- having lived in a kitchen that the floors went in after the cabs-not good!
You either need to put in sub flooring or your regular flooring so same height as your floor to support the cabinets.

As far as appliances, I am not the expert but our fridge and DW were in place before counter(and our wall oven and speed oven)

The sink went in with the counter and cooktop afterwards if my memory serves me correctly.

As we were not advised to put the floor in first, we didn't. However the cabinets were shimmed up to account for the floor height. All the base and tall cabinets are installed. They made sure to get me to the point that templating could occur ASAP. The big things yet to do are the fridge enclosure (end panels and a cabinet between them) and two wall cabinets to the one side of the fridge. They put a placeholder in place of the end panel at the end of the cabinet run for templating. Other things to be done are toekick, molding, and other finish-type work.

I'm feeling pretty confident about everything but the range. People replace counters all the time with existing ranges, right?

So your cabs are resting on nothing but shims? That sounds decidely unstable, particularly once your granite goes on. You'd better get that verified asap. Are you working with a contractor?

In with Hollysprings on this one but that also comes from the perspective of being the person to install the flooring and cabinets. Life is much easier that way. Definitely no range, fridge or dishwasher before flooring though. That would be a big mistake and you would never be able to move any of them for servicing or cleaning.

"So your cabs are resting on nothing but shims? That sounds decidely unstable, particularly once your granite goes on. You'd better get that verified asap. Are you working with a contractor?"

Virtually all cabinets rest on shims. It's not a problem even with granite installed.

All I can imagine is wobbly stacks of wood under the corners, which does not seem right. Physics says that the taller the stack the more unstable it is.

But you do have a point about all cabs being shimmed. I love hearing things like this from people I trust, then I panic less when faced with the same scenarios in my own projects.

Our cabs were placed on the subfloor, then counter, then tile around and in the cavity for DW, fridge, and range.

Definitely floor before range. The RNB sits on legs, and the finish floor is visible quite a ways back underneath the range.
I also had my range in before counter tops, and there were no issues on counter install...

This post was edited by ctycdm on Sun, Jul 27, 14 at 11:16

Check with countertop folks regarding appliances. In my case, fabricator almost required range on site. (Un)fortunately, at that time, I was reading a lot of posts on failed countertop installs. Since my range purchase and install were tied together as a pkg, I changed course and had installed prior to countertop install. It turned out to b a very good decision.

Before we remodeled in 2011, we had installed a wood floor on top of the thin vinyl covering the subfloor. The floor, now being higher relative to the counters, made the counters shorter. It also decreased the amount of toe kick space. Wasn't bad, but certainly not ideal.

When we did the remodel, we tore out the wood floor and left the vinyl squares (probably asbestos). Where we placed the cabinets, we pre-installed plywood the same thickness as the not-yet-arrived bamboo floor under all cabinets. At this point, the cabinets were higher than the existing floor. When the bamboo was installed, everything was perfectly level.

Some wood flooring (floating?) over some substrates (concrete?) are not advised for placing under cabinetry. Otherwise, as hollysprings says, the best way is for cabinets to sit on a finished floor. An alternative is to put plywood under the cabs and bring the flooring flush to the cab base.

We also had existing floor, so installed plywood at the same height under the cabinets and refrigerator.

Our order was
subfloor
Refinished existing oak floors
cabinets (including refrigerator, which was being paneled and is 3" from the closest counter, and under-counter wall oven and under-counter drawer microwave
Template
Counters
Rest of appliances - cooktop and dishwasher

Thanks everyone. The answers I was hoping to hear were:
"I also had my range in before counter tops, and there were no issues on counter install..." (cytcdm)

"...my range ...I changed course and had installed prior to countertop install. It turned out to b a very good decision." (Mags438)

I am going to be on the doorstep of the flooring place when they open tomorrow. I have a couple other installers to check with too. I'll also check with the appliance guy (range, hood, and fridge come from the same place) and see if they can install after floor, before counter. Or even if (after floor) they can install the hood and fridge and leave the range (check with granite guy to see which he'd want). Our living room has hardly any cabinets in it, we wouldn't mind looking at the BS in here for a while. The other stuff is all Miele and I think that it can all be installed after floor, before counters. I suppose I should call them to confirm.

I have a GC, but he's through HD and can only do things that are HD related. Since I got my appliances, granite, and flooring through other places, he's hands off. As you might have gathered from other threads, he's not a great communicator either. I used HD's GC so it'd be easy. Live and learn.

Cautionary check: when we wanted bamboo floors, there were only 2 places locally that had bamboo. For once in my life I checked Yelp, because what do I know? Interestingly, the place 5 miles east had all 1-Star reviews - rude, uncooperative, etc. The place 7 miles east had all 5-Star reviews - lovely, helpful, skilled, etc. We went with #2 and the reviews were right, they were great people. We maybe paid a bit more, but our product and installation were the best. When we came back for more a year later, they no longer carried that bamboo (bamboo company changed corporate structure or something), but went way out of their way to help us locate who did. They were good with their installer coming out to do the install. Glad we checked.

Thanks. For our tile, we've had two people we would be okay going with: the place we've had do the rest of our floors and the granite guy. We're not getting the tile from the floor place, we found it at the place we chose the slab. Either one said they'd do it. But now, both are busy. The floor place, I'm going to the store tomorrow and talk to someone else, look at the calendar with them (it's on their counter, I can see it.) I wouldn't have thought they'd do the tiling if we didn't buy it from them, but the one guy we've dealt with said no problem. Maybe that's why they're not that excited and can't fit it in. If they have something else that we like (we looked, but were only looking at one thing, my mind is more open now) maybe they'll be more willing to find a spot on their calendar.

I have a number of someone who did the floors for a colleague. I know they've had them do floor at least a couple times, so they've repeated business, must be good.

I'm not 100% sold on THE floor tile. DH is. But there are a couple other local places I'll check that I'd be comfortable with (NOT the place we went to for the last round of carpet we went with). I'll check out when their installation would be available, then I'll look to see if there's something I like (that I can talk DH into).