Worktop replacement in Aldborough Hatch

Yes. Aldborough Hatch is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are IG2. It is run from the Essex side, covering Essex & East London. Where the van can pull up level with the gate the pieces are handled the fewest times, which is what actually protects them. We stage the strip-out so the old tops leave in one trip rather than trickling out across the afternoon. Old tops out and new stone in, both through the same gap. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Base units from the seventies and eighties are often only 500mm deep, so a 600mm stone top overhangs at the front and the doors want checking against it. Post-war terraces have small, roughly square kitchens with a back door and a window in the middle of the run, so runs are short and joins are rare, but there are usually two corners and a window cill to work around in a couple of metres. Sound carcasses are the one condition. The older properties out here have uneven floors, so levelling the base units properly matters more than usual before any stone goes down.

Semi-rural feel with verges, unrestricted parking and generous frontages, so unloading is easy; the older cottages have low door heads and narrow openings that dictate how a slab is carried in. 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. With no room to turn, the old top gets cut up in the kitchen instead, which is dusty work and needs the room emptied first. That is agreed before a plumber is booked. Tell us what the approach looks like when you book the template and it gets built into the day rather than discovered on it.

It is one of the three we do most here, behind worktop templating. Same template visit, same workshop, same installers either way. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. The carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. A day, not a project. Rear and side-return extensions are where the islands appear, and an island is the piece that decides whether one slab does the kitchen or two. Old tops out in the morning, new stone down and sealed the same afternoon. A day, not a project.

With three walls in play the chance of one of them being out of square is high, and the template has to carry all three angles. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. Carcasses have to be sound first. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

Where a run finishes into a reveal, the depth of that reveal is taken at worktop height and nowhere else. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. Found at template, not on fit day. Empty the base units completely and have a plumber disconnect the sink, tap and any washing machine plumbed in under the worktop before we arrive. An owner living in the house makes the decisions and lives with them, so the specification tends to go towards the material rather than towards the lowest total. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. Units kept, surface changed.