Worktop replacement in Chelsea

Yes. Chelsea is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SW3. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of the borough. Bay bookings are usually an hour or two, which is fine for unloading and no use at all as a place to leave the van for a day. 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. It is a full day at the kerb, not a delivery. We come to the kitchen to template and again to fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Georgian houses put the kitchen in a basement or a rear closet wing, and the stairs down to it are the tightest part of the whole route. 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. Legs bottoming out on hard concrete or an uneven screed mean the tops of the carcasses are not one plane, and that is picked up at template rather than on fitting day. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. The old cut-out was hiding the notch you now need.

Sign-in at the gate, a permit on the dash and a named contact are usually wanted before anything comes off the van. 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 room is cleared for the way out as much as the way in. Underground loading has a height restriction, and a van with an A-frame on it is taller than the driver remembers. 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. 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. Old top out Tuesday, tenant in on Friday. 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. The flat earns nothing while it sits empty.

A downdraught extractor takes a long slot out of the middle of the piece and a motor housing out of the cabinet below it, so what sits under the top is settled before anything is cut. 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. The supply-only figure for material runs £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are lines of their own.

Level has to hold across the whole room rather than along one wall, or a floor that falls end to end shows as a step where two pieces meet. 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. 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. Whoever manages the block controls the lift booking, the bin store and the visitor parking, and none of that sits in the gift of the household whose kitchen it is. 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.

Join count is a question about slab size and run length, nothing else. An island often runs in one piece where a wall run cannot. A join is glued and clamped flush on the day, so it is fixed rather than something to be undone. Power and waste come up through the floor, and where they surface decides which cabinet can hold a sink and which one cannot. 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.

Grooves are machined into the surface rather than applied to it, so there is nothing to come loose later. Which side of the bowl they go is about how you stand at the sink, and it is settled before cutting. Nothing in a house of this age is square, and the kitchen is usually the part that has been altered most often. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the job is a day, and what makes it a difficult day is the building. What comes off tells you what goes on.

Granite tells you when the seal wants topping up: water stops beading on the surface and starts darkening it instead. Quartz and sintered stone never need sealing: quartz is non-porous and sintered stone has effectively zero porosity. Walls are thick, lime-plastered and built in a soft brick, so they take a scribe well and take a fixing badly. Carcasses are checked for square and fixed back before a stone top goes on them. A replacement is measured against the walls as they are now.

Material is quoted supply only and templating, fabrication and fitting sit on their own lines, so it is visible which part is stone and which is labour. The design and quotation visit is free and carries no obligation, so a figure exists before any commitment. A floor that falls across the depth of a run rather than along it tips the carcasses front to back, and packing the front feet changes the overhang while it fixes the level. A laminate top was scribed thin at the back to swallow it, and stone cannot be shaved down the same way. Same footprint, different tolerances.