Worktop replacement in Albany Park

Yes. Albany Park is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are DA5, DA14. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Bexley. Overhanging branches clear the roof of a car and catch the roof of a van, so the drive is looked at from the driver seat rather than from the doorstep. 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. Where the van must move, the waste goes on first. Nothing needs visiting and nothing needs collecting: the template is in your kitchen and so is the fit.

Cottage estate houses were built to a small number of standard plans, so the kitchen is compact, roughly square and predictable in the good sense. The kitchen is normally the original back room with a later side-return or rear extension bolted on, and that helps us: most pieces can go down the side alley and in through the back door in one length, so we can avoid joins that a front-door route would force. Same units, straighter line, better surface. The returns into a breast recess are the tightest scribes in the room, and they are eased in rather than forced. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. Strip out first, then measure what is actually there.

Even an easy kerbside carry wants the pavement clear at the tail lift, because a three-metre piece on edge has a swing radius nobody expects until it is swinging. 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. Old pieces are carried out before new ones are carried in. On a drive that only takes one vehicle nose-in, the van has to reverse the whole length of it to get back out, which decides which way it goes in. 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. A skip on the frontage takes the space the van needed.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop installation. An open-plan extension puts the worktop in the middle of the living space, so it is looked at from the sofa as well as worked on. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. Nothing else in the room has to change. Extension budgets are usually well spent by the time the worktop is ordered, which is where the choice between quartz and a thinner sintered stone actually gets made. The carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. A day, not a project.

Peninsulas frequently land on a lightweight partition or on units that were never fixed down, and stone needs proper support under it before it goes on. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. Where the seam went before is not where it goes now. Stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and the templating, the fabrication and the fitting each carry their own line.

An alcove is commonly wider at the back than at the front, so a piece cut to the opening drops in and then stands off the rear wall. We would rather find it at template than on the morning, which is why the templater looks behind the units. The old carcasses are rarely level and never were. Unlock the side gate and clear the alley of bins, bikes and pots, and arrange a plumber for the sink and an electrician if the hob is hard-wired. Someone who expects to still be there in ten years asks different questions: how a honed finish marks, what a sealer does and does not do, and whether a chip by the sink can be repaired in place. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. The surface changes and the kitchen stays the one they know.

Templating and fitting are two visits, not one, and the gap between them is when the stone is actually cut. A template on a normal kitchen takes two to three hours in the room. The fit follows 5 to 10 working days after the template, and nothing is cut before that visit because nothing is cut from a plan. A side passage and a back door mean the stone rarely has to come through the house, which changes the job more than most people expect. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the job is a day, and what makes it a difficult day is the building. Twenty years of settlement is measured, not argued with.

A finished join is typically two to three millimetres, colour-matched and sanded flush. A join sits over a cabinet gable. It never spans a gap and never runs through a cut-out. There are only ever a few legal positions, and the one taken is furthest from the light. Because a peninsula is seen from both sides, the underside of any overhang gets the same edge treatment as the top, which is easy to leave out of a spec. Going from a 38mm laminate to 20mm or 30mm stone drops the surface, which shows against tiles, a window board and any freestanding appliance. Stone wants gables where laminate needed none.

The bowl position has to be settled before templating, since the grooves are set out from it. A groove set is its own item on the quote rather than something rolled in with the sink cut-out. Where there is no room for a separate drainer, grooves are usually what gets specified instead. Solid brick with a sand and cement render is firm to work against and reliably out of plumb across the length of a run. Taking the old tops off is also the first honest look at what has been going on underneath them. The old top comes off in pieces, not whole.

An upstand covers the gap where the worktop meets a wall that is not flat, which is its real job. Tiling and stone can meet, but where they meet is decided before the template rather than after. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable where the two pieces meet. The kitchen sits at the rear with a back door beside it, so the carry is short and comes in from the garden rather than through the house. What catches people out is the junction between the old floor and the extension floor, which is rarely at the same level, so a run carrying across it needs the units packed before stone goes on. The wall behind the old top has not been seen in years.