Worktop replacement in Between the Commons

Yes. Between the Commons is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SW11. It is worked on our south west London run, along with the rest of Wandsworth. Where a marked loading box sits on the red route the stop is legal but timed, so the unload runs as one movement with every hand on it. 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 timed bay does not cover a strip-out and a fit. We come to the kitchen to template and again to fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Original quarry tiles survive under a later vinyl in many of these, and lifting the units off them shows how far the floor has fallen towards the garden end. 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. What is behind the old splashback decides the new one. A window board sitting below finished worktop height leaves two choices, drop the top under it or notch the stone around it, and both cost more than a straight run. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. It was there long before we were.

Door width, hall width and the diagonal at the turn are three separate measurements, and it is the diagonal that catches people out. 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 room is cleared for the way out as much as the way in. A bus lane along the frontage brings its own hours with it, and stopping in one is enforced the same way the red route is. We stage the strip-out so the old tops leave in one trip rather than trickling out across the afternoon. Old stone is heavier going out than it looked coming in.

Not particularly, and it would be easy to pretend otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation. That is a point about the buildings round here, not about the job. The quoting, the cutting and the fitting are identical here to anywhere else we work. 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. An open-plan extension puts the worktop in the middle of the living space, so it is looked at from the sofa as well as worked on. Old tops out in the morning, new stone down and sealed the same afternoon. The fastest upgrade a sound kitchen has.

An island is a single visible piece with four finished edges and no wall to hide against, so it is the piece the whole kitchen is judged on. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. A corner that was butted can be mitred this time. The material band is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

A cill projecting forward of the plaster line pushes the back edge out, and the units then stand off the wall by that amount for the whole length. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. The old top hid it. The drawing will not. 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. One staircase can serve an owner on the first floor and a managed tenancy on the second, so the access arrangement changes at every landing while the building stays the same. 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.

The check comes before the measuring rather than after, because the whole drawing is set out from that plane. Levelling belongs in the carcasses, on their own legs and packers. Stone does not flex, so a run that rocks on its carcasses rocks just as badly once it is stone. Where the sill lands inside the height an upstand would occupy there is no upstand, and the stone either dies into the reveal or stops short of it. We would rather find it at template than on the morning, which is why the templater looks behind the units. Nothing about it is a discovery on fitting day.

Granite tells you when the seal wants topping up: water stops beading on the surface and starts darkening it instead. Granite is porous to varying degrees, so it is sealed when we fit it and topped up over the life of the worktop. No maintenance visit is built into the job. Soap, water, and on the porous stones a seal. The outrigger shares a party wall with the addition next door for its whole length, so one long side of the kitchen is solid brick with another kitchen on the far side of it. 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. A new top on a settled run needs the run corrected first.

Taking the old tops off and disposing of them is its own line on the quote rather than something folded into the stone price. If you want the old top kept for a garage or a utility, say so and it stays on site. The carcasses stay put. Only the surface changes. The van is not staying on a main road for the day, so once the stone is off it goes and parks properly somewhere else. Two loads share the one space here, the old tops waiting to go and the new stone waiting to come in. The van has to stand through both halves of the day.

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. Upstands and splashbacks are templated after the worktop is down and settled, so they are a separate visit. The same firm templates and fits. Nobody else is brought in to install. The side return was an outside toilet and a coal store before it was ever a kitchen, and the walls left over from that are half a brick thick. Taking the old tops off is also the first honest look at what has been going on underneath them. A twenty-year-old run is replaced to its own shape.