Worktop replacement in Bishop's Park

Yes. Bishop's Park is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SW6. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Hammersmith and Fulham. On an event day the controls are wider, tighter and enforced harder than the signage suggests on any other morning of the week. 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. Access out counts as much as access in. Template and fit both happen at the property, so there is nothing to drive to and nothing to collect.

The bathroom upstairs sits directly over the kitchen, so its waste comes down in a boxed corner from floor to ceiling that no worktop is going to move. In most Victorian terraces the kitchen sits in the back addition, so you get a narrow galley with one outside wall and nothing square to work off. What is behind the old splashback decides the new one. 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. 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.

A Victorian hall arch sits lower than the ceiling either side of it, and it is the point a piece carried on edge meets first. 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. The room is cleared for the way out as much as the way in. The practical answer is to check the fixture list before the date is offered, because a template slot lost to a road closure cannot be recovered that week. 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. Waste needs a space of its own and the street rarely offers one.

Yes, one of the three we see most, with worktop installation ahead of it. Same visit to template, same workshop, same installers on the day. Extension budgets are usually well spent by the time the worktop is ordered, which is where the choice between quartz and a thinner sintered stone actually gets made. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. A plumber either side of us. Rear and side-return extensions are where the islands appear, and an island is the piece that decides whether one slab does the kitchen or two. The carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. The fastest upgrade a sound kitchen has.

A peninsula projects into circulation space, so its outer corners usually take a radius rather than a point, and that radius is agreed at template rather than assumed. 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. Expect £110 to £550 per square metre for material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting on their own lines.

Casement handles and stays swing down into the space above the worktop, so the clearance that counts is the one measured with the window open. 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. Whoever manages the block controls the lift booking, the bin store and the visitor parking, and none of that sits in the gift of the household whose kitchen it 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.

Bleach and limescale remover harm a polished finish rather than clean it, whichever material is on the units. A seal is not waterproofing. It only buys time to wipe a spill up. Granite is porous to varying degrees, so it is sealed when we fit it and topped up over the life of the worktop. Many of these had a bathroom or a WC built onto the far end of the addition, so the room now ends at a stud wall rather than at the original brickwork. 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. A new top on a settled run needs the run corrected first.

An external stair, a side return or a rear garden counts as carry and is measured the same way. Every piece goes in by hand and stone does not bend, so the tightest turn on the route sets the longest piece. A meter cupboard set into the hall wall narrows the run at exactly the height a carried piece travels. We plan the strip-out and the carry as one movement so the kitchen is only out of use for a single day. Old material is stacked outside rather than left along the route.

A mitred join at a corner is a different job from a butt join along a run, and they are not priced the same. Each join is an item on the drawing, so the layout and the figure move together. A join cannot cross a cut-out, so a sink mid-run takes away the position you would have used. Peninsula tops are often the longest single piece in the kitchen, so if anything in the layout is going to force a second slab it is generally this one. 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.

Upstand or splashback, the stone is cut from the same slab run as the worktop, at the same time, so the batch actually matches. The joint between splashback and worktop is siliconed, never grouted, so it can move a little without cracking. A full-height piece behind the hob has to allow for the extractor, so that gets settled first. The only window is in the side wall facing into the side return, so the room reads darker than its size and the worktop is doing much of the reflecting. 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. The fabric gets checked while it is open.