Worktop replacement in Cannon Hill

Yes. Cannon Hill is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SW20. It is worked on our south west London run, along with the rest of Merton. On a street with no restrictions the constraint is other residents rather than a warden, so it is worth putting a cone or a car out early. 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. Both visits happen in your kitchen, the template and the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Base units from the seventies and eighties are often only 500mm deep, so a 600mm stone top overhangs at the front and the doors want checking against 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. What is behind the old splashback decides the new one. 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. 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.

The top step is rarely the end of it, because a door swinging out onto the landing has to be held back before a piece can come off the flight. 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. Waste goes out the way the stone came in, so the route stays clear. A free-parking street with cars both sides can still leave the van forty metres away, and that distance is carry, not driving. 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. 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 and worktop installation. 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 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. 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. 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.

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. 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. Expect £110 to £550 per square metre for material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting on their own lines.

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. 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. An owner paying for this directly tends to want the reasoning as much as the number, so a quote that explains why a join sits where it does is worth more than a cheaper one that does not. 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.

Upkeep is settled when the slab is chosen, since it belongs to the material rather than the fabrication. Granite tells you when the seal wants topping up: water stops beading on the surface and starts darkening it instead. Marble is the one people underestimate. It is porous, like granite, and wants sealing. The kitchen is at the front or the back depending on the plan, and which it is decides whether there is a rear door on the route at all. Chipboard carcasses under the sink swollen from a slow leak will not take stone and get replaced before fit day. A new top on a settled run needs the run corrected first.

The tap hole is drilled in the workshop too, and its position depends on how far the tap has to swing. Where the hob lands is set out against the units and the wall behind, not off the kitchen plan. Undermount bowls are cut and polished in the workshop and dry-fitted to the stone on the bench before anything is loaded. Two parallel runs with a walkway between them is the most efficient shape there is on a slab, because both pieces nest as straight lengths with almost no waste. 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.

A join forced by the route still sits over a gable, so it is no poorer a join for that. An external stair, a side return or a rear garden counts as carry and is measured the same way. A piece travels on edge, never flat, because on edge is how stone of that length carries its own weight. Counting hands matters more than counting metres on a staircase, because a piece two people lift off a van still wants three on the flight and a fourth watching the trailing corner. We plan the strip-out and the carry as one movement so the kitchen is only out of use for a single day. Disconnection happens before the old top is lifted, not during.

Upstand or splashback, the stone is cut from the same slab run as the worktop, at the same time, so the batch actually matches. An upstand covers the gap where the worktop meets a wall that is not flat, which is its real job. These were built on a solid ground floor slab, so nothing bounces and nothing can be packed down, only up. The two corners and the cill in a couple of metres are all re-measured once the old top is off. The fabric gets checked while it is open.