Kitchen worktops in Beckton

Yes. The standard is a late-1980s house with a small square kitchen of roughly 2.4m by 2.4m, an integral garage alongside, and a serving arch into the dining room; the popular upgrade is knocking through and running a top across the old arch as a peninsula. Ceilings are lower and windows smaller than in the Victorian stock, so lighter surfaces get specified. Where the drive is shared, the half-hour the van spends in the way is agreed with the neighbour in advance rather than apologised for at the time. A van that has to move mid-fit costs the best part of an hour and takes a man off the tools to do it. Forty metres of carry changes the shape of the whole day.

1980s-90s Docklands housing estate, cul-de-sac starter home and recent apartment infill. Deep original skirting is often left in behind the units, standing them off the wall, so the back edge of the stone is plotted where the carcasses actually sit. The day is planned backwards from the hall. Nothing is screwed into plasterboard and hoped for.

Layout is all cul-de-sacs and looping distributor roads with generous driveways, so parking is simple and the carry is short. Watch for garage conversions where the new kitchen sits behind a narrow original garage doorway and a step down. A level threshold with hard standing outside it is the one arrangement where a full run goes in without a single re-grip. 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 material is stacked outside rather than left along the route.

Worktop replacement and worktop installation, in that order. 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. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. Cam-lock carcasses get braced before stone lands. The knock-through peninsula across an old serving arch is the recurring job here, and the arch reveal almost always needs an exact template rather than a stated dimension.

The joint where a peninsula meets the main run wants a gable directly under it, and where the units do not offer one, steel goes in to carry that joint instead. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Dry-lay first, always. A junction between an original floor and a later extension slab is almost never at the same level, so units carrying a run across it need packing first. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. A postformed top swallowed the fall. This will not. Material starts at £110 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting sit on their own lines rather than inside one figure.

Where ownership is split across a building, the common parts belong to someone else and the carry route is negotiated rather than assumed. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. Whoever lives there hears the timing first. Let us know the building when you book, and the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice are handled beforehand rather than on the fitting day.

The template produces a drawing, and the workshop cuts to that drawing once you agree it. 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. Nothing changes hands until after the template. Gas, waste and later wiring were boxed in against the wall long after the house was built, and that boxing is what the run has to clear. The fitting day is planned backwards from all of it, before the first piece comes off the van. Older buildings get the extra hour.

Old laminate is light and awkward rather than heavy, so it is usually the easier half of the day. Tiling bonded to the wall behind usually comes away with the old top, so that wall is agreed beforehand. Old tops are screwed or glued from underneath, so the drawer boxes come out before the worktop does. A step up from the drive to the threshold turns the last two metres into a lift, and a lift is where two pairs of hands become the minimum. We aim for the first slot of the day where parking is tight, because that is when the street is emptiest. We would rather start at seven than argue with a warden.

A remake goes back through the same cutting and polishing, so it is a return visit rather than a patch. The rest of the kitchen still goes in. One damaged piece does not hold up the pieces either side. Floors and units are protected before anything comes through the door. The tail lift is still the pinch point, because the piece has to be walked off it onto the trolley while it is sitting at chest height. 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. Whether the strip-out is a cut-up job is settled at template.

Say what you have and where it came from before anything is booked, because thickness and batch decide what can be done with it. Stone cut to somebody else’s drawing cannot usefully be re-cut to yours. The workmanship guarantee is the same either way. It does not extend to a material we did not supply. 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. The carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. Housings set out for laminate are checked first.