Worktop replacement in Collier Row

Yes. Collier Row is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are RM5. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Havering. Gravel and block paving both look like hard standing and neither takes a loaded trolley, so the run from tail lift to door gets boarded. 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. Old tops out and new stone in, both through the same gap. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, 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. 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. Units kept, surface changed, one day. Garage-side utilities are common here, so we usually template the kitchen and the utility together and cut both from the same slab batch to keep the colour consistent.

Wide estate roads with verges, individual driveways and garages, and unrestricted parking on most streets, so the van gets close and the carry is short and level. Even an easy kerbside carry wants the pavement clear at the tail lift, because a three-metre piece on edge has a swing radius nobody expects until it is swinging. 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. The strip-out is planned around it.

It is one of the three we do most here, behind worktop installation. Same template visit, same workshop, same installers either way. Where a single building holds several small kitchens, the work arrives as one job rather than four, and it should be cut off the same slab run so the batches genuinely match. The carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. A day, not a project. Batching several kitchens together is the one situation where buying a whole slab is cheaper per kitchen rather than more expensive. Old tops out in the morning, new stone down and sealed the same afternoon. A day, not a project.

A peninsula is an island with one end tied to a run, which means the join between them has to be planned rather than allowed to happen. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. The units stay, the surface changes. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

A chimney breast left in place splits a wall into two alcoves, and the two are rarely the same width and rarely parallel to each other. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. It is the usual surprise, and it is a known one. 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. Owner-occupied kitchens are usually being done once, which is why the edge profile, the vein direction and where a join falls are worth the conversation. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. Sound carcasses are the condition.