Worktop replacement in Bellingham

Yes. Bellingham is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE6. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Lewisham. A free-parking street with cars both sides can still leave the van forty metres away, and that distance is carry, not driving. 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. A skip on the frontage takes the space the van needed. Template and fit both happen at the property, so there is nothing to drive to and nothing to collect.

Some of these plans put a bathroom on the ground floor off the kitchen, so a third door opens into a room that already has more doors than wall. 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. A replacement is measured against the walls as they are now. An alcove is commonly wider at the back than at the front, so a piece cut to the opening drops in and then stands off the rear wall. 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.

Garden routes carry their own hazards: a drain cover, a step up to a patio, wet decking, or a lawn that will not take a loaded trolley. 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. It sets what the day actually looks like. Where the van can pull up level with the gate the pieces are handled the fewest times, which is what actually protects them. 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 waste leaves with us, so the van has to still be there.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop fabrication. The person choosing the worktop is not the person using it, and that shifts the balance from appearance towards running cost. The carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. The annexe top goes in on the same day. Where kitchens turn over between tenancies the priority is a surface that survives a decade of being treated as a chopping board. Old tops out in the morning, new stone down and sealed the same afternoon. Booked at short notice, because the notice is short.

Handles on opposing runs meet in the middle of the aisle, so a deep edge profile specified on both sides takes width out of the standing space twice over. 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. Reckon on £110 to £550 per square metre for the material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting itemised separately.

The face of a breast is rarely flat, and a top returning onto it picks up that bow across the last few hundred millimetres of its length. 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. These kitchens tend to be compact and reasonably square, so the fixed template, fabrication and fitting lines are a larger share of the total than the stone is. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. Disposal is named, not assumed.

Packing takes up small variation. It is not there to hide something that belongs in the units. 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. Small variation is taken up by packing under the top on the fitting day. 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. 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.

If the sink or hob changes after the template, the drawing changes first and nothing is cut meanwhile. A boiling tap needs a hole of its own and a cupboard below for the tank, so the units change too. Two bowls means two cut-outs and a bridge of stone between them, which decides where the sink can go. Older houses put the boiler or the meter on one of the two walls, and whatever is boxed in around it sets the point where that run has to stop. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. Breakfast bars get the steel they never had.

Nothing is payable until the template, and the template measures the room as it stands rather than estimating from a plan. What is quoted is what the drawing says, and the figure does not move unless the drawing does. The design and quotation visit is free and carries no obligation, so a figure exists before any commitment. 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. It usually explains the odd filler piece or strip of beading in the existing run that nobody could account for. A postformed top swallowed the fall. This will not.

An external stair, a side return or a rear garden counts as carry and is measured the same way. A piece travels on edge, never flat, because on edge is how stone of that length carries its own weight. Where there is a lift, whether it can be booked out and padded matters as much as its size. A side gate hung to open outward against a fence post is narrower in use than it measures, and lifting the gate off its hinges is usually the quickest win on the route. We plan the strip-out and the carry as one movement so the kitchen is only out of use for a single day. That is agreed before a plumber is booked.