Worktop replacement in Becontree Heath

Yes. Becontree Heath is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are RM8, RM10. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Barking and Dagenham. A gate post set narrower than the opening looks generous from the road and stops a wide piece a metre in. 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. A skip on the frontage takes the space the van needed. The template happens in your kitchen and so does the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Built-in stores and a fuel place beside the back door were standard, and one of them is usually still sitting in the corner of the kitchen. Ex-council flats and maisonettes are built in dense concrete and blockwork, so anything that has to be fixed back, such as brackets under a peninsula or support for an end panel, goes in with proper anchors and an SDS rather than plasterboard fixings. A replacement is measured against the walls as they are now. Walls that bow along their length are the normal condition rather than the exception, and a straight-cut back edge will show a shadow gap at one end and touch at the other. 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 to a patio or a raised threshold at the back door means the piece is lifted rather than rolled, and that is where the crew size gets decided. 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. The strip-out is planned around it. Overhanging branches clear the roof of a car and catch the roof of a van, so the drive is looked at from the driver seat rather than from the doorstep. We stage the strip-out so the old tops leave in one trip rather than trickling out across the afternoon. The waste leaves with us, so the van has to still be there.

It is inside the three we do most here, under worktop installation. Either way: same template, same workshop, same fitters. 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 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. Where a family has been living around a building site for months, the finish date carries more weight than any other part of the specification. The carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. A plumber either side of us.

It is the heaviest single piece in the kitchen, so the number of hands needed on the day and the route in are worked out from that piece rather than from the runs. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. A corner that was butted can be mitred this time. Supply only, material is £110 to £550 per square metre, with templating, fabrication and fitting quoted on their own lines.

A run can measure dead right at both ends and still belly out in the middle, which only appears once the template plots the intermediate points. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. A filler strip is evidence, not decoration. Sort a parking bay or permit near the entrance, confirm the lift is in service and get us the door codes, and tell us about any asbestos survey on the flat before we start stripping out. Where a landlord or housing provider is involved there is a specification to meet and a process to follow, and both are settled before a date is offered. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. Out and in on the same permission.

On a porous stone the grooved area is sealed with the rest, and it gets wet more than anything else. A groove set is its own item on the quote rather than something rolled in with the sink cut-out. Where there is no room for a separate drainer, grooves are usually what gets specified instead. Kitchens in this stock are compact and reasonably square, which makes the fixed lines a larger share of the total than the material is. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the job is a day, and what makes it a difficult day is the building. The old cut-outs rarely match where the new appliances go.

A finished join is typically two to three millimetres, colour-matched and sanded flush. Join count and position are settled from the template drawing rather than improvised on the fitting day. Veining carries through a join where both pieces come off the same slab, which is decided at nesting. Whether it comes off the same slab as the run behind it or needs one of its own is settled by laying both against the usable area of the slab, not by adding the metres up. Going from a 38mm laminate to 20mm or 30mm stone drops the surface, which shows against tiles, a window board and any freestanding appliance. Old runs are rarely square, and stone will not forgive it.

The quote is written from the template drawing. Before that it works from what you have described. Ask for the lines rather than the total. One number for a kitchen tells you nothing you can check. No installed price per square metre is published, because it is not a real number. Where a corner is a couple of degrees off, a mitre cut to a theoretical ninety degrees opens on the wall side and there is no closing it afterwards. We would rather find it at template than on the morning, which is why the templater looks behind the units. The stack was boxed in after the kitchen went in.

Topping a seal up is a wipe-on job with a cloth. A seal is not waterproofing. It only buys time to wipe a spill up. The bead where the sink and hob meet the stone is siliconed rather than sealed, and wants watching. The floor is a concrete slab screeded before the units existed, so it falls slightly and consistently towards the back door. The plaster is bonded straight onto the concrete, so the bottom course of tiles tends to bring plaster with it when the old top comes off, leaving a rough band behind the upstand. Chipboard that has taken water will not take stone.