Worktop replacement in Coombe (Kingston)

Yes. Coombe (Kingston) is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are KT2. It is worked on our south west London run, along with the rest of Kingston upon Thames. 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. 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. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

These are drawing-office jobs - book-matched islands, mitred 100mm aprons and full-height panels, so the slab is chosen off the rack before templating.

Private gated estate roads with entry codes and a caretaker, long in-and-out driveways with ample standing, and rear garden access wide enough to bring stone round the outside instead of through the house. Where the parking court sits behind the block the carry crosses open ground and gets boarded, because loaded trolleys and block paving do not agree. We plan the strip-out and the carry as one movement so the kitchen is only out of use for a single day. The strip-out is planned around it.

Not particularly, and it would be easy to pretend otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop design & quotation, worktop fabrication and worktop installation. That is a statement about the local housing rather than about the work. It is quoted, cut and fitted exactly the same way here as anywhere else on the patch. Households sharing a house tend to want two prep areas rather than one, which usually means an island as well as a perimeter run. The carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. A day, not a project. A second kitchen or a kitchenette in an annexe is a small job with the same fixed template, fabrication and fitting lines as a large one. Old tops out in the morning, new stone down and sealed the same afternoon. A day, not a project.

If the island is a few hundred millimetres longer than the usable length of a slab, a second slab gets bought to gain that overhang, and the whole slab is paid for rather than the part used. 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.

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. 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. 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. A street with houses in single occupation next to the same houses cut into flats produces two completely different jobs from the same elevation. If the carcasses are tired the honest answer is that stone will find that out, and it is better said before than after. Units kept, surface changed.