Worktop replacement in Clapham Junction

Yes. Clapham Junction is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SW11. It is worked on our south west London run, along with the rest of Wandsworth. A bus lane along the frontage brings its own hours with it, and stopping in one is enforced the same way the red route is. 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. A one-hour window will not hold a two-way job. There is nothing to drive to and nothing to pick up, because both visits are to the property itself.

The stair from the street is narrow with a tight turn at the top, which caps piece length well below anything the run itself needs. Post-war terraces have small, roughly square kitchens with a back door and a window in the middle of the run, so runs are short and joins are rare, but there are usually two corners and a window cill to work around in a couple of metres. Whatever the shell has done since is dealt with now. A scribe has a working limit, and past twenty millimetres or so the back edge starts eating depth the run cannot spare. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. The alcove was never square and it still is not.

Where the stairwell is narrow enough that the stone travels on edge the polished face runs within an inch of the plaster, so the walls get boarded as well as the steps. 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. Disconnection happens before the old top is lifted, not during. 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. 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. The strip-out waits until the new stone has somewhere to stand.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop splashbacks & upstands and worktop fabrication. Conversions put kitchens where the services could be made to reach rather than where they belong, so runs are short and interrupted. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. The doors are staying, so the colour answers to them. In a converted house the flat entrance and the internal doorway are usually tighter than the communal stairs, and that is easy to overlook. The carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. Between tenancies is the only window there is.

A galley puts the sink on one side and the hob on the other, which spreads the cut-outs across two pieces instead of weakening one. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. Joins move onto the gables this time round. Expect £110 to £550 per square metre for material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting on their own lines.

Walls that bow along their length are the normal condition rather than the exception, and a straight-cut back edge will show a shadow gap at one end and touch at the other. We would rather find it at template than on the morning, which is why the templater looks behind the units. What passed for a fit in chipboard will not pass in stone. 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. The same building type can arrive as a careful one-off kitchen or as a fast turnaround, and the honest answer is that they are priced differently. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. Somebody has to own the skip.

Both are templated after the worktop is down and settled, because they are cut to the wall itself. Tiling and stone can meet, but where they meet is decided before the template rather than after. It is quoted by area like the worktop, so a long run is a material line rather than a trim. The structure below is commercial, so the floor is often timber over a shop ceiling and the load path under an island is worth thinking about. 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. The building has kept moving; the new template catches up.

Upkeep is settled when the slab is chosen, since it belongs to the material rather than the fabrication. Marble is the one people underestimate. It is porous, like granite, and wants sealing. Topping a seal up is a wipe-on job with a cloth. Working hours are constrained by the business underneath, so noisy work has a window rather than a day. Chipboard carcasses under the sink swollen from a slow leak will not take stone and get replaced before fit day. What is behind the old splashback decides the new one.

The design and quotation visit comes first. It is free and carries no obligation. The fit follows 5 to 10 working days after the template, and nothing is cut before that visit because nothing is cut from a plan. A template on a normal kitchen takes two to three hours in the room. A boiler hangs on the wall above the run in most of these, and its pipework drops exactly where a splashback wants to go. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the job is a day, and what makes it a difficult day is the building. A single day, planned properly.

The tap hole is drilled in the workshop too, and its position depends on how far the tap has to swing. A piece with a bowl and a hob cut into it is the fragile one, and it is handled accordingly. The catch with a galley is that both runs are seen end-on from the doorway, so any difference in overhang between the two reads immediately. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. The return is remeasured even where it looks unchanged.