Worktop replacement in Brixton

Yes. Brixton is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SW9, SW2. It is worked on our south London run, along with the rest of Lambeth. Loading exemptions on red routes are narrow, time-limited and heavily camera-enforced, so we plan around them rather than relying on them. 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. Old stone is heavier going out than it looked coming in. You never have to visit anything or collect anything: we template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen.

The kitchen occupies the ground floor of the addition with a garden door at the far end, so there is a second way in that is narrower than the front door and a great deal shorter. 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. Off in the morning, on by the afternoon. Two walls each a degree out give an internal corner two degrees out, and the whole of that error lands in the mitre. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. The stack was boxed in after the kitchen went in.

A rated load sounds ample until three lengths of granite and two fitters are standing on it, so the stone goes up one piece at a time. 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. Cutting a top down indoors means emptying the room first. The realistic answer on a main road is an early slot, a spotter on the van and pieces staged in one movement rather than several trips. 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 van has to stand through both halves of the day.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop fabrication and worktop splashbacks & upstands. 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 units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. One flat out of use at a time. Extension work runs late far more often than it runs early, and the worktop is close to the last thing in, so the date agreed at the start is rarely the date that happens. Old tops out in the morning, new stone down and sealed the same afternoon. Chosen against the doors that are staying.

The joint where a peninsula meets the main run wants a gable directly under it, and where the units do not offer one, steel goes in to carry that joint instead. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. The new pieces are nested, not traced off the old ones. Supply-only material is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately rather than rolled in.

A scribe has a working limit, and past twenty millimetres or so the back edge starts eating depth the run cannot spare. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. A postformed top swallowed the fall. This 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. Access is arranged through a managing agent or a scheme office rather than with the household directly, so a date gets confirmed once in writing and moving it costs a fortnight. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. Expected downtime beats discovered downtime.

The template is taken in your kitchen after the units are in and fixed, never before. The template produces a drawing, and the workshop cuts to that drawing once you agree it. On the fitting day floors and door frames are protected, joins clamped flush, sink and hob sealed. A hundred and forty years of alterations sit under the current kitchen, and the worktop is what has to sit flat on top of all of it. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the job is a day, and what makes it a difficult day is the building. A single day, planned properly.

A join added to get stone into the room is a different thing from a join added because the slab ran out, and the quote says which is which. The alternative to a join is a shorter run, which is usually the wrong thing to trade away. Splitting a run costs a join, and that is the price of getting stone into the room at all. Blankets on the walls and a board on the floor go in before the first piece, because a scratched car becomes a bill from the managing agent long after the kitchen is finished. 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. Out and in happen along the same protected route.

The bowl position has to be settled before templating, since the grooves are set out from it. Machining is permanent. If a later kitchen moves the sink, the grooves stay where they were cut. Grooves are machined into the surface rather than applied to it, so there is nothing to come loose later. Ceilings are generous and the rooms are narrow, so the runs are long, the aisle is tight and there is nowhere to stand a slab on edge. Taking the old tops off is also the first honest look at what has been going on underneath them. What comes off tells you what goes on.

If it is a decision for later, say so at the template: the match is a question about the batch. Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because the openings are machined rather than chopped out on the wall. What decides between them is usually the wall: what it is built of, how flat it is, and where the sockets ended up. The chimney breast has almost always been taken out of the kitchen with the stack left standing above it, so that bay of wall is newer plasterwork on a different plane. 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. The old top hid it; the new one will not.