Worktop replacement in Brompton

Yes. Brompton is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SW3. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Kensington and Chelsea. A red route means no stopping, and no stopping means exactly that, so the stone comes in from a side street or from a bay behind the property. 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. Old stone is heavier going out than it looked coming in. Template and fit both happen at the property, so there is nothing to drive to and nothing to collect.

A flat over a shop is reached by a separate street door and a straight steep stair, and that stair is the whole access question. 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. Tile beds and adhesive come off before the new top goes on. 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. 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.

Every flight adds a set of handling movements, and handling is where stone gets damaged, so a fourth-floor walk-up is priced by the flight rather than by the metre. 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. Two carries in one day needs the route free for both. Where the frontage is a clearway the unload happens away from the door and the carry gets longer, which is a crew and time question rather than a stone one. We stage the strip-out so the old tops leave in one trip rather than trickling out across the afternoon. 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 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 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. 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. The carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. Chosen against the doors that are staying.

Butt-jointing over the gable puts the seam a few hundred millimetres back from the corner, below the eye line instead of straight across it. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. A run that flexed under laminate gets support now. Reckon on £110 to £550 per square metre for the material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting itemised separately.

Where the boxing stands proud of the finished wall the upstand behind it has to be broken into separate lengths, because one piece cannot pass it. We would rather find it at template than on the morning, which is why the templater looks behind the units. The laminate was scribed thin. Stone cannot be. 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. The same building type can arrive as a careful one-off kitchen or as a fast turnaround, and the honest answer is that they are priced differently. If the carcasses are tired the honest answer is that stone will find that out, and it is better said before than after. Units stay, so the flat is usable that evening.

A piece with a bowl and a hob cut into it is the fragile one, and it is handled accordingly. If the sink or hob changes after the template, the drawing changes first and nothing is cut meanwhile. Two bowls means two cut-outs and a bridge of stone between them, which decides where the sink can go. Corner sinks and corner hobs sit exactly where the joint wants to be, so on an L the cut-out positions get settled before the join positions do. Going from a 38mm laminate to 20mm or 30mm stone drops the surface, which shows against tiles, a window board and any freestanding appliance. Appliance gaps are checked against the new thickness.

A groove set is its own item on the quote rather than something rolled in with the sink cut-out. A groove set needs a clear stretch of worktop beside the bowl, so it competes with the run for length instead of being free surface. Where there is no room for a separate drainer, grooves are usually what gets specified instead. A boiler hangs on the wall above the run in most of these, and its pipework drops exactly where a splashback wants to go. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the job is a day, and what makes it a difficult day is the building. Nothing new goes down until the run reads level end to end.

A long top on units that were shimmed once and never checked is the commonest version of this, and it is cheap to fix beforehand. Packing takes up small variation. It is not there to hide something that belongs in the units. Levelling belongs in the carcasses, on their own legs and packers. A boxed soil stack or service riser in the corner of a run eats into the worktop depth and has to be scribed around rather than cut square. 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.

Both are templated after the worktop is down and settled, because they are cut to the wall itself. The joint between splashback and worktop is siliconed, never grouted, so it can move a little without cracking. Tiling and stone can meet, but where they meet is decided before the template rather than after. The stair from the street is narrow with a tight turn at the top, which caps piece length well below anything the run itself needs. Chipboard carcasses under the sink swollen from a slow leak will not take stone and get replaced before fit day. A replacement is measured against the walls as they are now.