Worktop replacement in Brunswick Park

Yes. Brunswick Park is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are N11. It is worked on our north London run, along with the rest of Barnet. A gate post set narrower than the opening looks generous from the road and stops a wide piece a metre in. 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. Your part of it happens entirely at home, with nothing to travel to and nothing to bring back.

The kitchen sits at the rear with a door to the garden and a window over the sink, so the useful run is broken into two short lengths. 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. Tile beds and adhesive come off before the new top goes on. 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. 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.

Where the van stands level with the front of the house a piece gets handled twice instead of five times, and stone breaks on handling rather than on the road. 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. A stone top coming out whole needs the same crew as one going in. Overhanging branches clear the roof of a car and catch the roof of a van, so the drive is looked at from the driver seat rather than from the doorstep. We stage the strip-out so the old tops leave in one trip rather than trickling out across the afternoon. 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. 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 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. An open-plan extension puts the worktop in the middle of the living space, so it is looked at from the sofa as well as worked on. 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.

One leg of an L is nearly always the working run and the other little more than a landing space, but both are templated, cut and edged to the same standard. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. A run that flexed under laminate gets support now. The supply-only figure for material runs £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are lines of their own.

Where a run finishes into a reveal, the depth of that reveal is taken at worktop height and nowhere else. 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. 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. The gap between tenancies is the whole window.

The quote is itemised, so a job where you already hold the slab is the same job with the material line taken off it. Stone cut to somebody else’s drawing cannot usefully be re-cut to yours. Extension budgets are usually well spent by the time the worktop is ordered, which is where the choice between quartz and a thinner sintered stone actually gets made. Old tops out in the morning, new stone down and sealed the same afternoon. Old top out Tuesday, tenant in on Friday.

Granite tells you when the seal wants topping up: water stops beading on the surface and starts darkening it instead. A seal is not waterproofing. It only buys time to wipe a spill up. Quartz carries resin, so a hot pan wants a trivet, while granite and sintered stone will take one without complaint. These were built in short runs of six or eight houses, so the party walls are solid brick and the rear elevation is a straight line with no outriggers. What catches people out is the junction between the old floor and the extension floor, which is rarely at the same level, so a run carrying across it needs the units packed before stone goes on. A replacement is measured against the walls as they are now.

Two kitchens the same length can be far apart, because material, edge and cut-outs move independently of size. Nothing is payable until the template, and the template measures the room as it stands rather than estimating from a plan. Sill height gets settled with the template on site, because it is one of the few dimensions nobody has measured before we arrive. We would rather find it at template than on the morning, which is why the templater looks behind the units. What is behind the old top decides the day.

Undermount bowls are cut and polished in the workshop and dry-fitted to the stone on the bench before anything is loaded. If the sink or hob changes after the template, the drawing changes first and nothing is cut meanwhile. Two runs meeting at an internal corner is the most common shape we fit, and the corner is where the decisions are. 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.