Worktop replacement in Castelnau

Yes. Castelnau is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SW13. It is worked on our south west London run, along with the rest of Richmond upon Thames. 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. 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. The template happens in your kitchen and so does the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Walls are thick, lime-plastered and built in a soft brick, so they take a scribe well and take a fixing badly. 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. Tile beds and adhesive come off before the new top goes on. A wall line that runs level over a floor that does not means the finish closes up on the plinth at one end, which is joinery rather than something the stone can answer. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. Taking the top off is what exposes the floor.

Where only one car serves the building a breakdown on the morning halts the job outright, so the fallback route is worked out at template rather than on the landing. 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. Out and in happen along the same protected route. 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. We stage the strip-out so the old tops leave in one trip rather than trickling out across the afternoon. The strip-out waits until the new stone has somewhere to stand.

Not especially, and pretending otherwise would be simple enough. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop splashbacks & upstands, worktop fabrication and worktop installation. It is a fact about the local housing rather than about the work. The job is quoted, cut and fitted the same way wherever on the patch it lands. 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 units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. Old top out Tuesday, tenant in on Friday. Extension kitchens are usually specified long before they are buildable, so the run lengths on the drawing and the run lengths in the room are different numbers. Old tops out in the morning, new stone down and sealed the same afternoon. The flat earns nothing while it sits empty.

Seating overhangs past roughly 300mm will not carry on the carcass alone, so flat steel bar or a plywood substrate has to be built into the units first. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. Stone wants gables where laminate needed none. Supply-only material is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately rather than rolled in.

Where two pieces meet over a fall in the floor the join has to be flush to the hand as well as true to the level, because the eye reads the join and forgives the room. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. The old cut-out was hiding the notch you now need. 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. Flats bought out of managed stock keep the original kitchen dimensions long after the ownership changed, so the layout says very little about who is paying for the work. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. Void periods do not extend to suit a lead time.

If a piece cannot be got in at all, we say so at the template rather than on the day. What decides it is not the width of the stairwell but the length of piece that can be turned in it. A piece travels on edge, never flat, because on edge is how stone of that length carries its own weight. A car that answers every floor button pressed while a piece is standing in it needs to be held on the key, and the key usually lives at a desk that wants notice. We plan the strip-out and the carry as one movement so the kitchen is only out of use for a single day. The van stands for both movements, not just the delivery.

Where the hob lands is set out against the units and the wall behind, not off the kitchen plan. A sit-on sink and an undermounted one are different cut-outs, so which it is gets settled before the template. Nothing is cut out in the kitchen. Cutting a bowl on site is how worktops get cracked. An island carries its own edge detail all the way round, so a mitred 100mm apron on four sides is four mitres cut, bonded and polished before the piece ever leaves the bench. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. The strip-out is the part worth planning.

What comes out goes by the same route the new stone comes in by, which is why that route is walked before anything is lifted. Old laminate is light and awkward rather than heavy, so it is usually the easier half of the day. The units below stay exactly as they are; only the surface is replaced. Where a marked loading box sits on the red route the stop is legal but timed, so the unload runs as one movement with every hand on it. Two loads share the one space here, the old tops waiting to go and the new stone waiting to come in. Loading out is loading in, done in reverse and heavier.

Ask for the lines rather than the total. One number for a kitchen tells you nothing you can check. The design and quotation visit is free and carries no obligation, so a figure exists before any commitment. No installed price per square metre is published, because it is not a real number. Floors settle, and once base units are packed and levelled properly the stone sits true while everything else in the room admits it is not. We would rather find it at template than on the morning, which is why the templater looks behind the units. Levels get corrected before the new top is measured.