Worktop replacement in Bromley Common

Yes. Bromley Common is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are BR2. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Bromley. A shared drive is only useful if the neighbour is not the one parked behind the van, so we ask which side the standing belongs to before the date is set. 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. Both loads want the same few metres of kerb. Nothing needs visiting and nothing needs collecting: the template is in your kitchen and so is the fit.

The under-stair cupboard opens off the kitchen in most of them, and its door swing is the reason a corner run stops where it does. 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. The units have settled with the floor and get re-levelled. A live soil stack cannot be chased back into the wall, so the depth it steals is permanent and the run is planned around it rather than through it. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. Nothing about it is a discovery on fitting day.

Carrying through the house means protecting the whole route first: floor boarded, banister padded, and the front door held open on a wedge rather than by hand. 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. Old material is stacked outside rather than left along the route. Drives with a dropped kerb and a tight turn-in take a long van at an angle, and that angle decides which side the tail lift can work from. 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. Half a day of parking buys half a job.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop splashbacks & upstands. 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. 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. 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. Old tops out in the morning, new stone down and sealed the same afternoon. Chosen against the doors that are staying.

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. The new pieces are nested, not traced off the old ones. Stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and the templating, the fabrication and the fitting each carry their own line.

Boxing built in plasterboard on a light frame will take no useful fixing, so nothing bears on it and the stone is carried off the carcasses either side. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. The laminate was scribed thin. Stone cannot be. 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. Where ownership is split across a building, the common parts belong to someone else and the carry route is negotiated rather than assumed. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. Units stay, so the flat is usable that evening.

The fitting itself is one visit: a plain run is a morning, an island with splashbacks takes most 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. No payment is due before the template. The rear extension is usually the newest and truest part of the building, so it is the older half of the kitchen that gives the trouble. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the job is a day, and what makes it a difficult day is the building. Laminate hides a level that stone will not.

The quote is written from the template drawing. Before that it works from what you have described. Plumbing, gas and electrical work are not in the figure, because we do not do them. What moves the figure after templating is a change you make: a different edge, an extra cut-out, a bigger sink chosen late. A stack boxed diagonally across a corner leaves a triangle of dead space, and the top is cut to that triangle rather than to a square return. A laminate top was scribed thin at the back to swallow it, and stone cannot be shaved down the same way. What is behind the old top decides the day.

What comes out goes by the same route the new stone comes in by, which is why that route is walked before anything is lifted. On a replacement the old top comes off in the morning and the new stone is down and sealed the same day. The carcasses stay. Only the surface changes. Where the drive is too short for the van the back end overhangs the footway, and a footway is a route people are using rather than spare space. We stage the strip-out so the old tops leave in one trip rather than trickling out across the afternoon. The carry happens twice here, so the distance counts twice.

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. An upstand covers the gap where the worktop meets a wall that is not flat, which is its real job. The chimney breast served a back boiler and is usually still standing, so there is a shallow recess on one side of the room. The junction between the old floor and the extension floor is where a run crossing it needs packing before stone goes on. Tile beds and adhesive come off before the new top goes on.