Worktop replacement in Canning Town

Yes. Canning Town is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are E16. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Newham. The van is not staying on a main road for the day, so once the stone is off it goes and parks properly somewhere else. 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. We come to the kitchen to template and again to fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Windows went in on a programme with plastic frames set into the original openings, so the frame is thicker, the glass area smaller and the reveal has a liner over the concrete. The plaster is bonded straight onto the concrete, so the bottom course of tiles tends to bring plaster with it when the old top comes off, leaving a rough band behind the upstand. Plaster comes away with the old upstands more often than not. 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. 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.

Pieces get staged in the ground floor lobby and sent up singly, which needs somewhere to stand them where nobody will walk into them. 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. Out and in happen along the same protected route. 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. 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 installation and worktop splashbacks & upstands. 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 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. 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. 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.

A galley that is also the route to the back door is a corridor first and a kitchen second, and what the shape can take is set by the traffic going through it. 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. The supply-only figure for material runs £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are lines of their own.

Boxing is rarely the same depth at worktop height as it is at floor level, so measuring it low down is the usual reason a top will not sit back. 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. Sort a parking bay or permit near the entrance, confirm the lift is in service and get us the door codes, and tell us about any asbestos survey on the flat before we start stripping out. Where a landlord or housing provider is involved there is a specification to meet and a process to follow, and both are settled before a date is offered. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. Expected downtime beats discovered downtime.

A join sits over a cabinet gable. It never spans a gap and never runs through a cut-out. Dark and heavily veined stone shows a join more than a pale even one, which is worth knowing before the slab is picked. What you get is a line rather than a step, because the pieces are levelled to each other first. Two runs of similar length nest as a pair off one slab, and if one of them grows by a few hundred millimetres the pair stops fitting and the yield changes for both. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. The sink is chosen before the cut list is set.

Quartz carries resin, so a hot pan wants a trivet, while granite and sintered stone will take one without complaint. Upkeep is settled when the slab is chosen, since it belongs to the material rather than the fabrication. No maintenance visit is built into the job. Soap, water, and on the porous stones a seal. The landing serves two or three front doors that open outward onto it, so the space to turn a piece at the top of the flight is not entirely yours to use. Plaster bonded straight onto concrete comes away with the bottom course of tiles, leaving a band behind the upstand. The building has kept moving; the new template catches up.

If the sink or hob changes after the template, the drawing changes first and nothing is cut meanwhile. Undermount bowls are cut and polished in the workshop and dry-fitted to the stone on the bench before anything is loaded. Where the hob lands is set out against the units and the wall behind, not off the kitchen plan. Where the aisle is too tight the usual answer is a reduced-depth top on one side, and a 500mm run is a different cut, a different sink and a different drainer to a 600mm one. Going from a 38mm laminate to 20mm or 30mm stone drops the surface, which shows against tiles, a window board and any freestanding appliance. Joins move onto the gables this time round.

Delivery to the workshop has to be arranged and dated, since nothing is nested until it is there. Supply through us runs £110 to £550 per square metre for the slab alone, which is the line you would be removing. Rear and side-return extensions are where the islands appear, and an island is the piece that decides whether one slab does the kitchen or two. Old tops out in the morning, new stone down and sealed the same afternoon. The flat earns nothing while it sits empty.