Worktop replacement in Chelsea Harbour

Yes. Chelsea Harbour is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SW10. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Kensington and Chelsea. The goods lift has its own booking sheet, and a bay slot without a lift slot only gets the stone as far as the lobby. 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. It is a full day at the kerb, not a delivery. Both visits happen in your kitchen, the template and the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

A refuse chute or a service duct takes a corner of the kitchen in several of the standard plans, and neither of them moves. 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. Whatever the shell has done since is dealt with now. An alcove is commonly wider at the back than at the front, so a piece cut to the opening drops in and then stands off the rear wall. 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.

Handrails, mirrors and a sloping ceiling panel all eat into the usable diagonal, and none of them appear on a lift specification sheet. 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. The van stands for both movements, not just the delivery. A bay shared across a parade of shops turns over all day, so the arrival time matters more than the length of the booking does. We stage the strip-out so the old tops leave in one trip rather than trickling out across the afternoon. Two loads, one space, one day.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop installation and worktop fabrication. Quartz suits let property well: no sealing, no annual maintenance, and nothing an incoming tenant has to be told to look after. The carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. Nothing else in the room has to change. A worktop replacement between tenancies is a single-day job by design, because the flat is not earning while it is empty. Old tops out in the morning, new stone down and sealed the same afternoon. A day, not a project.

Sockets set into the end panel keep the top clear, but they sit below the stone and are cut into the panel by the fitter rather than machined into the worktop. 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. Material runs £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting each get their own line.

The face of a breast is rarely flat, and a top returning onto it picks up that bow across the last few hundred millimetres of its length. We would rather find it at template than on the morning, which is why the templater looks behind the units. The alcove was never square and it still is not. 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. Two flats with an identical layout can want entirely different things from the same run of worktop, which is why the quote follows the run rather than the address. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. Strip-out and fit inside one access window.

An island is where this usually shows, standing free with no wall to level against. A sloping floor is not the problem. The plane the unit tops finish in is. Packing takes up small variation. It is not there to hide something that belongs in the units. Old breasts carry a bulge low down where the original opening was closed up, and the units stand off it before the stone is measured at all. A laminate top was scribed thin at the back to swallow it, and stone cannot be shaved down the same way. What passed for a fit in chipboard will not pass in stone.

Nothing is payable in advance of the template. The fitting itself is one visit: a plain run is a morning, an island with splashbacks takes most of the day. The design and quotation visit comes first. It is free and carries no obligation. The original units were screwed to timber grounds set into the wall, and where those were torn out the plaster was patched rather than replaced. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the job is a day, and what makes it a difficult day is the building. Cutting the old top out saves the units below it.

A dropped pan years later is a different question, and stone is remade rather than filled either way. A remake goes back through the same cutting and polishing, so it is a return visit rather than a patch. Door frames and the stair route are protected too, since most contact happens on the way in. A lift out of service for the day turns a straightforward install into a stair carry, so the slot gets confirmed with whoever manages the building rather than against a calendar. 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. A laminate run comes out easier than stone goes in.

We seat and seal the sink and hob on the day; water, waste, gas and electrics are for your plumber and electrician. A boiling tap needs a hole of its own and a cupboard below for the tank, so the units change too. A pop-up socket in the surface is one more cut-out through the full thickness, and it wants the same clear space beneath it that a sink does. 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.