Worktop replacement in Blackfen

Yes. Blackfen is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are DA15. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Bexley. 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. 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. The waste leaves with us, so the van has to still be there. The template happens in your kitchen and so does the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The original kitchen was a small rear room with a larder and a back door, and nearly all of them have since been opened into the dining room. The kitchen is normally the original back room with a later side-return or rear extension bolted on, and that helps us: most pieces can go down the side alley and in through the back door in one length, so we can avoid joins that a front-door route would force. What is behind the old splashback decides the new one. Alcove pieces get cut oversize on both scribe edges, with the true wall angles carried on the template drawing rather than assumed. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. A filler strip is evidence, not decoration.

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. 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 route is protected once and then used four times. Where the van cannot turn on the plot it has to arrive already facing the right way, so the approach along the street is part of the plan. We stage the strip-out so the old tops leave in one trip rather than trickling out across the afternoon. Both loads want the same few metres of kerb.

It is inside the three we do most here, under worktop installation. Either way: same template, same workshop, same fitters. 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 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. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. 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.

Both runs are in view at the same time, so the two pieces are taken off the same area of slab and the veining is set to run the same way on each side. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. Breakfast bars get the steel they never had. Supply only, material is £110 to £550 per square metre, with templating, fabrication and fitting quoted on their own lines.

Where a breast interrupts a long wall the join can often go there, so it reads as a natural break rather than a line in the middle of a worktop. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. The stack was boxed in after the kitchen went in. Unlock the side gate and clear the alley of bins, bikes and pots, and arrange a plumber for the sink and an electrician if the hob is hard-wired. A quartz sample left on the counter for a week under the actual kitchen lights settles more arguments than any showroom, and an owner is the only person in a position to do that. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. Owners phase this work; a void period cannot.

Templating and fitting are two visits, not one, and the gap between them is when the stone is actually cut. No money changes hands before the template. On the fitting day floors and door frames are protected, joins clamped flush, sink and hob sealed. Crittall windows were swapped for plastic ones in openings that were made good rather than rebuilt, which leaves reveals that are neither straight nor equal. 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 top comes off in pieces, not whole.

Floors and units are protected before anything comes through the door. A dropped pan years later is a different question, and stone is remade rather than filled either way. Stone cannot be filled and made good the way laminate can, so a damaged piece is remade rather than patched. Suction lifters need a clean dry face to hold, so in the wet the pads come off and the piece goes back to being carried on webbing by hand. 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. A stone top coming out whole needs the same crew as one going in.

No installed price per square metre is published, because it is not a real number. What moves the figure after templating is a change you make: a different edge, an extra cut-out, a bigger sink chosen late. The returns into a breast recess are the tightest scribes in the room, and they are eased in rather than forced. We would rather find it at template than on the morning, which is why the templater looks behind the units. A postformed top swallowed the fall. This will not.

If a piece cannot be got in at all, we say so at the template rather than on the day. Every piece goes in by hand and stone does not bend, so the tightest turn on the route sets the longest piece. Splitting a run costs a join, and that is the price of getting stone into the room at all. A loading bay or a red route puts a clock on the unload, so the pieces come off in the order they will be fitted rather than the order they were loaded. The old tops leave by the same route, so the carry out and the skip or van are planned alongside the carry in. Timing the two carries is most of the planning.