Worktop replacement in Beckenham

Yes. Beckenham is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are BR3. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Bromley. Permit hours are what matters, not the permit itself, because a bay that frees up at six in the evening is no use for a template at ten. 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. You never have to visit anything or collect anything: we template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen.

Ceilings are high enough that an extractor over the island has a long drop, and its position is fixed before the island top is templated. These are the multi-piece jobs: long runs, a large island and often a range cooker that cannot be moved, so the stone is templated in several pieces and how the vein runs across the joins matters. The units have settled with the floor and get re-levelled. Old breasts carry a bulge low down where the original opening was closed up, and the units stand off it before the stone is measured at all. 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.

Open-tread and cantilevered stairs give nothing to lean a piece against, so the whole weight stays on the crew for the full length of the flight. 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. Old material is stacked outside rather than left along the route. Without a bay the van ends up on a single yellow with a crew member watching it, which takes a pair of hands off the carry. We stage the strip-out so the old tops leave in one trip rather than trickling out across the afternoon. 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. Several units in one building are fitted out to the same drawing, so an error on that drawing is an error repeated in every flat. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. Four flats, four days, no scaffold week. A converted flat is measured off the original house, so no two units in the same building have quite the same kitchen run. The carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. Cam-lock carcasses get braced before stone lands.

A full-depth tall unit projects past the worktop line, and the run has to be scribed against its side panel instead of carrying on past it. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. A thinner top drops the run against the tiles. Supply only, material is £110 to £550 per square metre, with templating, fabrication and fitting quoted on their own lines.

Two alcove pieces will not swap over however similar they look, so they are marked left and right at the bench and stay that way to the van. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. The old carcasses are rarely level and never were. Have a fitter or joiner fix and level the island units beforehand, and get the sink, taps, hob and any range on site before templating so we cut to the actual appliances. Where someone is living in the house through the work, the strip-out and the fit are planned so the kitchen is out of use for a day and not a week. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. Sequenced around access rather than around the workshop.

What moves the figure after templating is a change you make: a different edge, an extra cut-out, a bigger sink chosen late. Cut-outs, edge profile and join count are itemised, so taking one out removes a line rather than starting an argument. A chimney breast left in place splits a wall into two alcoves, and the two are rarely the same width and rarely parallel to each other. We would rather find it at template than on the morning, which is why the templater looks behind the units. A filler strip is evidence, not decoration.

Grooves are machined in the workshop at the same time as the bowl cut-out, because they cannot be done well in a kitchen. Grooves are machined into the surface rather than applied to it, so there is nothing to come loose later. Ceilings are high enough that the wall units sit low against them, which leaves a tall band of wall above the worktop doing nothing. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the job is a day, and what makes it a difficult day is the building. Water damage under a sink is the usual find.

Doorways, the newel post and the handrail usually take the room away, rather than the stairs themselves. What decides it is not the width of the stairwell but the length of piece that can be turned in it. The alternative to a join is a shorter run, which is usually the wrong thing to trade away. A handrail that has to come off before a piece will pass is twenty minutes at the start of the day, and it goes back on the wall before we leave. We plan the strip-out and the carry as one movement so the kitchen is only out of use for a single day. Whether the strip-out is a cut-up job is settled at template.

Day to day all three want soap and water; abrasive creams and scouring pads are what dull a polished surface. Topping a seal up is a wipe-on job with a cloth. The bead where the sink and hob meet the stone is siliconed rather than sealed, and wants watching. A large villa has wide doors, a generous hall and somewhere to park, so the joins that go in are chosen for layout rather than forced by the route. The old island top is frequently sitting on units that were never fixed down, which is fine for laminate and not for stone. Tile beds and adhesive come off before the new top goes on.