Worktop replacement in Blackheath Standard

Yes. Blackheath Standard is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE3, SE7. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Greenwich. Plenty of zones run at the weekend as well as through the week, so a Saturday date is not automatically the easier one to work. 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. Where the van must move, the waste goes on first. There is nothing to drive to and nothing to pick up, because both visits are to the property itself.

Walls look modern and are not: block or breeze with a skim that has been patched over decades, so dry-laying and scribing still apply. Post-war terraces have small, roughly square kitchens with a back door and a window in the middle of the run, so runs are short and joins are rare, but there are usually two corners and a window cill to work around in a couple of metres. The building has kept moving; the new template catches up. Window boards and cills stand proud of the plaster, so the back edge of the top has to be plotted to where the units actually sit rather than to the wall. 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.

Where the staircase comes down into the hall the bottom treads project into the width, and nothing about that can be moved for the day. 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 permit covering the street is permission to park rather than a space reserved on it, and on a full street the difference is the whole morning. 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.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop splashbacks & upstands. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. The fastest upgrade a sound kitchen has. Extension kitchens are usually specified long before they are buildable, so the run lengths on the drawing and the run lengths in the room are different numbers. The carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. One flat out of use at a time.

A dishwasher door on one side and an oven door on the other cannot both stand open in a narrow aisle, so which appliance goes where matters more in this shape than in any other. 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. Expect £110 to £550 per square metre for material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting on their own lines.

Where a run finishes into a reveal, the depth of that reveal is taken at worktop height and nowhere else. 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. Empty the base units completely and have a plumber disconnect the sink, tap and any washing machine plumbed in under the worktop before we arrive. Someone who expects to still be there in ten years asks different questions: how a honed finish marks, what a sealer does and does not do, and whether a chip by the sink can be repaired in place. 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.

Hoisting through a window is occasionally the answer, and it is a decision made at the template, not improvised on the fitting day. What decides it is not the width of the stairwell but the length of piece that can be turned in it. A tiled hall floor takes a dropped corner badly, so boards go down over the tiles before anything comes through the door. 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.

Bleach and limescale remover harm a polished finish rather than clean it, whichever material is on the units. Upkeep is settled when the slab is chosen, since it belongs to the material rather than the fabrication. Granite is porous to varying degrees, so it is sealed when we fit it and topped up over the life of the worktop. The window sits in the middle of the run over the sink, and its board and cill set the limit on how tall an upstand can be. The units are often 1970s or 80s and only around 500mm deep, so a standard 600mm stone top overhangs at the front and the doors and drawer fronts need checking against it. What is behind the old splashback decides the new one.

If the sink or hob changes after the template, the drawing changes first and nothing is cut meanwhile. A Belfast or butler sink has to be installed and at its final height before the template, because the stone is cut to sit on it. A tap under a window board still needs room for its handle to lift, which is checked at the template. A window at one end and a doorway at the other means one end of the run is lit from behind and the other is interrupted, so the two ends of the same length behave differently. Going from a 38mm laminate to 20mm or 30mm stone drops the surface, which shows against tiles, a window board and any freestanding appliance. The new pieces are nested, not traced off the old ones.

Both are templated after the worktop is down and settled, because they are cut to the wall itself. It is quoted by area like the worktop, so a long run is a material line rather than a trim. Tiling and stone can meet, but where they meet is decided before the template rather than after. Base units from the seventies and eighties are often only 500mm deep, so a 600mm stone top overhangs at the front and the doors want checking against it. Chipboard carcasses under the sink swollen from a slow leak will not take stone and get replaced before fit day. A new top on a settled run needs the run corrected first.