People come up with odd ways of doing things all the time, there is nothing wrong with it, but scribing cabinets to the floor in most circumstances, even custom cabinets, is odd.
There is simply no need or benefit to scribing as opposed to shimming. The extra time and money spent does not increase quality.
You are making some wild assumptions there. If you are using pre-built cabinets(almost 100% of track homes) and everything a person would get from lowes/home depot, you are going to have to shim up the cabinets. The only time you wouldn't shim up base cabinets is if you are custom making the cabinets. And even then, it would be next to impossible to be them perfect on most concrete subfloors without some amount of shims.
You want some level of support from the floor if you are putting granite or quartz countertop on them. That crap is heavy if 100% of the weight is going on the wall studs, you are going to have issues.
Finally, in 99% of the installs, you aren't going to scribe granite or quartz countertops to the wall. You are going to get the ends right and there will be a small amount of gap left from end to end to allow for wall variations. You either tile the backsplash or use some of the countertop material to make the backsplash.
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I am getting ready to do my flooring and I will be tiling under my dishwasher and refrigerator but chose not to tile under the cabinets.
So how do you predict how the entire wall of cabinets is going to layout and figure out how much to remove. Much easier to shim and be done with it and quicker. Time is money.Odd maybe because people consistently do it wrong. Scribing takes less time and certainly costs less than adding and finising trim afterwards. It takes one temp set which is just leveling the things on shims and maybe putting in one screw so you can mark the kick, then maybe 3 minutes of belt sanding per box. HUGE COST... <---sarcasm.
So how do you predict how the entire wall of cabinets is going to layout and figure out how much to remove. Much easier to shim and be done with it and quicker. Time is money.
And in my area almost all tile guys & GC's want tile down first before setting cabinets. No doubt it's easier on a tile guy to do it in one big wall to wall chunk and hide your cuts on the edges.
Odd maybe because people consistently do it wrong. Scribing takes less time and certainly costs less than adding and finising trim afterwards. It takes one temp set which is just leveling the things on shims and maybe putting in one screw so you can mark the kick, then maybe 3 minutes of belt sanding per box. HUGE COST... <---sarcasm.
You find the max gap for the entire cabinet set, you make a scribe block ever so slightly thicker, and you use that scribe block to mark every cabinet. This way you are always taking off the same relative amount on every cabinet. When you are done they all sit at exactly the same height.
How long does it take you to cope, attach, nail hole fill, and finish base, and how much does the base cost? Time and materials are money!
Methods vary. Here's a kitchen fabricated in my shop and installed by my crew:
Sometimes we build a box with an integrated toe kick and shim them level. Sometimes, as in the picture, we shim and level a separate base, set raw boxes, and attach faceframes, kicks, and doors. You are saying it is wrong?
We don't flip cabinets around and upside down to belt sand the bottoms. We don't create piles of dust. There is no temp setting, set the box once and T-bolt them together. There are no nail holes to fill, we pocket screw and/or micropin. Everything is prefinished in the shop. None of the issues you present occur in my world.
Your methods may work for you but would not fit with my business model in the slightest.
When we did my kitchen, we tiled to the edge of the cabinets and just a tad under the front edge of the dishwasher (about an inch or so). But this was a preexisting kitchen and nothing was being ripped out, just tile going down.
I don't flip any cabinets either. The base is usually separate, and attached after it's scribed. Temp setting is throwing the base on the floor, tossing a level on it, shoving the normal amount of shims under it to make it level, marking it, dragging it out to grind on, and then dropping it back where it goes. Drop the boxes on top of the base, spike it up and your done.
How would you guys do a trimless kick on a floor with variation?
You clearly stated this in post #5 and I missed it, sorry. I'm an asshole. With a separate base scribing is pretty fast and simple. I build my base in as long a unit as possible, shoot a level line around the room, screw the base unit to the line, and shim up the front. I do use synthetic shims and glue them with CA so I don't have to worry about movement.
Often, lately, we're using adjustable legs with a snap on kick. Not my cup 'o tea but I work with some designers who love to sell the idea of "euro".
The same as you would. Mark it with a scribe tool, cut it, and adjust as needed with a rasp or sandpaper.