Worktop replacement in Brook Green

Yes. Brook Green is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are W6, W14. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Hammersmith and Fulham. Enforcement zones rarely accept a trade van unloading stone as an exemption, so this gets sorted before the date is confirmed rather than argued about afterwards. 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 waste leaves with us, so the van has to still be there. Template and fit both happen at the property, so there is nothing to drive to and nothing to collect.

The back addition is a narrow two-storey outrigger with a single external wall, and the kitchen galley runs the length of it. 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. A new top on a settled run needs the run corrected first. Casement handles and stays swing down into the space above the worktop, so the clearance that counts is the one measured with the window open. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. The old top hid it. The drawing will not.

A meter cupboard set into the hall wall narrows the run at exactly the height a carried piece travels. 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. Old material is stacked outside rather than left along the route. Visitor permits are issued to the household rather than to the trade, so the ones the day needs come from the customer and are best in hand the week before. 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.

Not particularly. It would be easy to say yes and leave it there. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop fabrication and worktop installation. That is about what people have here rather than how it gets done. It is quoted, cut and fitted exactly the same way here as anywhere else on the patch. A second kitchen or a kitchenette in an annexe is a small job with the same fixed template, fabrication and fitting lines as a large one. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. Cam-lock carcasses get braced before stone lands. Where an annexe has been built or converted, its floor and its walls are newer than the main house and behave differently under the same run. The carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. Housings set out for laminate are checked first.

Some of them overhang on two sides at once, and each side is worked out separately, because the load on an edge people lean against is not the load on an edge people walk past. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. Old runs are rarely square, and stone will not forgive it. Material runs £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting each get their own line.

A low sill over the sink run is what decides between an upstand and stone dying into a window board, and there is often less clearance than an upstand is tall. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. Nothing about it is a discovery on fitting day. 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. 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. The gap between tenancies is the whole window.

Chips at an edge or a corner are the usual form, because that is where stone is least supported. Stone cannot be filled and made good the way laminate can, so a damaged piece is remade rather than patched. A remake goes back through the same cutting and polishing, so it is a return visit rather than a patch. Whether the kitchen sits straight ahead or off a turn at the end of the hall changes the maximum piece far more than the hall width does. We plan the strip-out and the carry as one movement so the kitchen is only out of use for a single day. Whether the strip-out is a cut-up job is settled at template.

If the units run late the template moves, not the fit: the gap between them is fabrication. The design and quotation visit comes first. It is free and carries no obligation. Nothing is payable in advance of the template. Ground floors fall away towards the garden across the whole footprint, so the units are packed up long before anything is measured for stone. 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 sloping floor is not the problem. The plane the unit tops finish in is. 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. 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. 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.

The tap hole is drilled in the workshop too, and its position depends on how far the tap has to swing. 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. An island is a single visible piece with four finished edges and no wall to hide against, so it is the piece the whole kitchen is judged on. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. Where the seam went before is not where it goes now.