Worktop replacement in Battersea

Yes. Battersea is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SW11, SW8. It is worked on our south west London run, along with the rest of Wandsworth. A permit covering the street is permission to park rather than a space reserved on it, and on a full street the difference is the whole morning. 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. The old tops leave in one movement rather than piece by piece. The work comes to you. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, with nothing to visit or collect.

That rear wall carries the back door and the only window, which leaves very little uninterrupted length for a sink run. 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. Whatever the shell has done since is dealt with now. 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. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. The old carcasses are rarely level and never were.

A step up off the pavement means the piece is lifted to the threshold before it is carried anywhere, and that first lift is the one that wants four hands. 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. Where the household has used up the visitor permits it gets for the year, the remaining options are a suspension or a paid bay and both belong on the quote. 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. Where the van must move, the waste goes on first.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop installation. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. A void week is the entire schedule. Extension kitchens are usually specified long before they are buildable, so the run lengths on the drawing and the run lengths in the room are different numbers. Old tops out in the morning, new stone down and sealed the same afternoon. A plumber either side of us.

A dishwasher door on one side and an oven door on the other cannot both stand open in a narrow aisle, so which appliance goes where matters more in this shape than in any other. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. A thinner top drops the run against the tiles. The material band is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

Two walls each a degree out give an internal corner two degrees out, and the whole of that error lands in the mitre. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. A filler strip is evidence, not decoration. 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. Whoever manages the block controls the lift booking, the bin store and the visitor parking, and none of that sits in the gift of the household whose kitchen it is. If the carcasses are tired the honest answer is that stone will find that out, and it is better said before than after. Out and in on the same permission.

A long top on units that were shimmed once and never checked is the commonest version of this, and it is cheap to fix beforehand. A sloping floor is not the problem. The plane the unit tops finish in is. Levelling belongs in the carcasses, on their own legs and packers. 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 stack was boxed in after the kitchen went in.

Upkeep is settled when the slab is chosen, since it belongs to the material rather than the fabrication. Topping a seal up is a wipe-on job with a cloth. Quartz carries resin, so a hot pan wants a trivet, while granite and sintered stone will take one without complaint. Many have had the ground floor chimney breast removed to gain three hundred millimetres, and the gained strip is newer blockwork standing proud of the old plaster. What the old top has been hiding is usually a floor that settled towards the back and units that were never fixed back to the wall. Plaster comes away with the old upstands more often than not.

An external stair, a side return or a rear garden counts as carry and is measured the same way. The lift, if there is one, is measured on the diagonal, because that is the dimension a long piece actually uses. Where there is a lift, whether it can be booked out and padded matters as much as its size. A Victorian hall arch sits lower than the ceiling either side of it, and it is the point a piece carried on edge meets first. We plan the strip-out and the carry as one movement so the kitchen is only out of use for a single day. The room is cleared for the way out as much as the way in.

Sinks, taps and hobs are yours to buy in any case, and they only have to be in the room for the template. Thickness has to be known before quoting, since it decides the edge, the cut-outs and what the units carry. Stone cut to somebody else’s drawing cannot usefully be re-cut to yours. Extension work runs late far more often than it runs early, and the worktop is close to the last thing in, so the date agreed at the start is rarely the date that happens. A surface swap is the fastest upgrade available on a kitchen that is otherwise sound. The fastest upgrade a sound kitchen has.