Worktop replacement in Caledonian Road

Yes. Caledonian Road is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are N7, N1. It is worked on our north London run, along with the rest of Islington. 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. 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. The van has to stand through both halves of the day. Your part of it happens entirely at home, with nothing to travel to and nothing to bring back.

These flats have been reconfigured more than once, so the kitchen often sits in what was a bedroom with services run a long way to reach it. The units are often 1970s or 80s and only around 500mm deep, so a standard 600mm stone top overhangs at the front and the doors and drawer fronts need checking against it. Chipboard that has taken water will not take stone. The stone carries the scribe because the wall cannot be persuaded, so back edges are cut oversize and eased in rather than dropped straight down. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. A postformed top swallowed the fall. This will not.

A height barrier on the car park entrance rules out a tail-lift van outright, and the stone then transfers to a trolley at the barrier itself. 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. Timing the two carries is most of the planning. A single red line has hours and a double red line does not, and the difference decides whether an early start is a plan or a penalty. 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. A one-hour window will not hold a two-way job.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop fabrication and worktop installation. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. Chosen against the doors that are staying. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. The carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. Old top out Tuesday, tenant in on Friday.

Island units are rarely fixed to anything at first fix, so they get screwed to the floor and levelled against the perimeter run before the stone is measured at all. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. Where the seam went before is not where it goes now. The stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately.

A room can be out of square in both directions at once, so the wall that leans is also the wall that runs downhill, and one scribe cannot answer both. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. The alcove was never square and it still is not. 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. One owner can take a date next week while the flat below needs three weeks of notice, so several kitchens in one building end up scheduled by the slowest permission. 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 check comes before the measuring rather than after, because the whole drawing is set out from that plane. Units have to be fixed down as well as levelled. A loose carcass moves under stone. Where a run meets an appliance, level decides whether that appliance door still clears the stone above it. Plaster thickness varies over the height of a wall, so the line at worktop height is not the line at skirting level, and the units decide which one matters. We would rather find it at template than on the morning, which is why the templater looks behind the units. What passed for a fit in chipboard will not pass in stone.

A Belfast or butler sink has to be installed and at its final height before the template, because the stone is cut to sit on it. The sink, tap and hob have to be physically in the room at the template, not merely ordered, because the cut-out is machined to the item itself. Knee room under a breakfast bar is measured from the face of the cabinets rather than from the edge of the stone, so a deep apron quietly eats the depth somebody actually gets to sit in. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. Stone wants gables where laminate needed none.

What you get is a line rather than a step, because the pieces are levelled to each other first. Dark and heavily veined stone shows a join more than a pale even one, which is worth knowing before the slab is picked. Veining carries through a join where both pieces come off the same slab, which is decided at nesting. Three stools along one side need more clear length than most plans allow, and once the seating depth is fixed the piece either grows or it loses a seat. Going from a 38mm laminate to 20mm or 30mm stone drops the surface, which shows against tiles, a window board and any freestanding appliance. The strip-out is the part worth planning.

Tiling and stone can meet, but where they meet is decided before the template rather than after. If it is a decision for later, say so at the template: the match is a question about the batch. A full-height piece shows a wall that is out more than an upstand does, over the extra height. The front rooms sit over the shop window with a structural beam beneath them, and the floor either side of that beam is not at one level. Chipboard carcasses under the sink swollen from a slow leak will not take stone and get replaced before fit day. The floor has dropped since the kitchen went in.