Worktop replacement in Acton

Yes. Acton is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are W3. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Ealing. Building management is often the real gate rather than the bay itself, since the barrier, the shutter and the lift each need someone with a fob. A replacement is a two-way job, with old tops going out and new stone coming in, so the van needs to stay put across the whole day. Both loads want the same few metres of kerb. There is nothing to drive to and nothing to pick up, because both visits are to the property itself.

The original stair has an open well running the full height of the building, which occasionally lets a long piece go up vertically where it would never take the turns. In most Victorian terraces the kitchen sits in the back addition, so you get a narrow galley with one outside wall and nothing square to work off. Chipboard that has taken water will not take stone. Plaster thickness varies over the height of a wall, so the line at worktop height is not the line at skirting level, and the units decide which one matters. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. The beading was covering a bowed wall.

Where only one car serves the building a breakdown on the morning halts the job outright, so the fallback route is worked out at template rather than on the landing. Worth remembering that the old tops have to come out the way the new ones come in, and a laminate run is easier to remove in one length than to carry in one. Both movements are planned as one. Time-limited bays are camera-enforced across a lot of managed estates, so the unload runs to the clock and the van moves off afterwards. Waste is the part people forget: the old laminate or tired granite has to be walked back to the van and it does not get lighter. Half a day of parking buys half a job.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop installation and worktop fabrication. Batching several kitchens together is the one situation where buying a whole slab is cheaper per kitchen rather than more expensive. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. The annexe top goes in on the same day. A licensed shared house has fire-door and escape-route rules that decide how and when stone can be carried through the common parts. The carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. Booked at short notice, because the notice is short.

Some of them overhang on two sides at once, and each side is worked out separately, because the load on an edge people lean against is not the load on an edge people walk past. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. Laminate hides what the gables are really doing. Reckon on £110 to £550 per square metre for the material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting itemised separately.

Two walls each a degree out give an internal corner two degrees out, and the whole of that error lands in the mitre. We would rather find it at template than on the morning, which is why the templater looks behind the units. Strip out first, then measure what is actually there. Have a plumber booked to disconnect the sink, tap and waste first thing and reconnect after we have gone, and clear the hallway and stairs completely so we can carry slabs through the house. A street with houses in single occupation next to the same houses cut into flats produces two completely different jobs from the same elevation. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. The gap between tenancies is the whole window.

No maintenance visit is built into the job. Soap, water, and on the porous stones a seal. Bleach and limescale remover harm a polished finish rather than clean it, whichever material is on the units. Where a top takes wine, oil and lemon most days, the non-porous materials ask least of the household. Winders at the head of each flight are the tightest part of the climb and they are appreciably tighter than the straight run below them. Lath-and-plaster and bowed brickwork mean we template for scribes rather than straight cuts, and each piece is offered up and eased in rather than dropped straight down. The floor has dropped since the kitchen went in.

Templating, fabrication and fitting are the same three lines whether the stone came from us or from you. The quote is itemised, so a job where you already hold the slab is the same job with the material line taken off it. Four kitchens ordered together take one template visit and one delivery, and that is where the saving comes from rather than from a discount on the stone. Old tops out in the morning, new stone down and sealed the same afternoon. Nothing else in the room has to change.

Variation past what packing can take up has to be corrected in the carcasses before we cut, because the template records the units as they stand. Units have to be fitted, fixed and level before templating, and it is better to hear that at the template than on the fitting day. A scribe has a working limit, and past twenty millimetres or so the back edge starts eating depth the run cannot spare. A laminate top was scribed thin at the back to swallow it, and stone cannot be shaved down the same way. The old carcasses are rarely level and never were.

A boiling tap needs a hole of its own and a cupboard below for the tank, so the units change too. Two bowls means two cut-outs and a bridge of stone between them, which decides where the sink can go. The tap hole is drilled in the workshop too, and its position depends on how far the tap has to swing. An island is a single visible piece with four finished edges and no wall to hide against, so it is the piece the whole kitchen is judged on. Going from a 38mm laminate to 20mm or 30mm stone drops the surface, which shows against tiles, a window board and any freestanding appliance. A corner that was butted can be mitred this time.