Worktop replacement in Bank

Yes. Bank is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are EC2R, EC3V. It is worked on our City of London run, along with the rest of the Square Mile. The goods lift has its own booking sheet, and a bay slot without a lift slot only gets the stone as far as the lobby. 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. Half a day of parking buys half a job. The measuring and the fitting are both done at the property, so there is nothing to visit or collect.

The room is genuinely square and the units are plumb, so the visit is more about the building than about the kitchen. The room itself is the easy part: walls are plumb, corners are square and the floor is flat, so scribes are minimal and joins can be tight. What the last fitter did to the wall shows up on strip-out. Where a peninsula returns into a stud wall the load has to sit on the units, with the wall doing no more than steadying it. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. The old top hid it. The drawing will not.

Booked delivery windows on a managed estate run to an hour, and a worktop install does not happen inside an hour. 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. A stone top coming out whole needs the same crew as one going in. A bay shared across a parade of shops turns over all day, so the arrival time matters more than the length of the booking does. 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. The carry happens twice here, so the distance counts twice.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop installation. Studio and one-bed conversions put the whole kitchen against a single wall, so the job is one run and everything depends on that one length. The carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. A deposit deduction rarely covers a new top. A kitchen carved out of a larger room sits under whatever the original plan left behind, so the run frequently ends at a blocked doorway or a boxed-in service. Old tops out in the morning, new stone down and sealed the same afternoon. Four flats, four days, no scaffold week.

Corner sinks and corner hobs sit exactly where the joint wants to be, so on an L the cut-out positions get settled before the join positions do. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. The return is remeasured even where it looks unchanged. Supply only, material is £110 to £550 per square metre, with templating, fabrication and fitting quoted on their own lines.

A lightweight stud partition will not carry a breakfast bar or a peninsula end, and stone finds that out faster than laminate ever did. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. Nothing about it is a discovery on fitting day. Book the service lift, loading bay and concierge access for the full day, and confirm the building's permitted working hours in writing. One owner can take a date next week while the flat below needs three weeks of notice, so several kitchens in one building end up scheduled by the slowest permission. If the carcasses are tired the honest answer is that stone will find that out, and it is better said before than after. One day out of use, agreed in advance.

The template is taken in your kitchen after the units are in and fixed, never before. The design and quotation visit comes first. It is free and carries no obligation. A template on a normal kitchen takes two to three hours in the room. The lift car, the loading bay and the building manager decide the piece sizes here, not the slab. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the job is a day, and what makes it a difficult day is the building. Same carcasses, straighter lines.

A tap under a window board still needs room for its handle to lift, which is checked at the template. A sit-on sink and an undermounted one are different cut-outs, so which it is gets settled before the template. Nothing is cut out in the kitchen. Cutting a bowl on site is how worktops get cracked. One leg of an L is nearly always the working run and the other little more than a landing space, but both are templated, cut and edged to the same standard. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. Yield is worked out fresh for the new material.

The lift, if there is one, is measured on the diagonal, because that is the dimension a long piece actually uses. A join added to get stone into the room is a different thing from a join added because the slab ran out, and the quote says which is which. A height barrier on the car park entrance rules out a tail-lift van outright, and the stone then transfers to a trolley at the barrier itself. 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. Timing the two carries is most of the planning.

If it is a decision for later, say so at the template: the match is a question about the batch. Stone up a wall is heavier than tile and bonded rather than hung, so the wall has to be sound. Piece size is set by the lift car and the entrance dogleg, which routinely turns a two-piece kitchen into a three-piece one. The work is all in the building, not the kitchen. The units have settled with the floor and get re-levelled.