Worktop replacement in Cowley

Yes. Cowley is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are UB8. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Hillingdon. The distance from the standing to the actual kitchen door is the number that counts, since plenty of drives finish at a side gate and a garden path. 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. The carry happens twice here, so the distance counts twice. There is nothing to drive to and nothing to pick up, because both visits are to the property itself.

An inter-war terrace is wider than a Victorian one and shallower than a semi, so the kitchen is a compact square room rather than a galley. What catches people out is the junction between the old floor and the extension floor, which is rarely at the same level, so a run carrying across it needs the units packed before stone goes on. A replacement is measured against the walls as they are now. Two walls each a degree out give an internal corner two degrees out, and the whole of that error lands in the mitre. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. What passed for a fit in chipboard will not pass in stone.

Where the van stands level with the front of the house a piece gets handled twice instead of five times, and stone breaks on handling rather than on the road. 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. Old material is stacked outside rather than left along the route. Deep gravel takes the wheels of a loaded trolley and holds them, so either boards go down or the pieces are carried. We stage the strip-out so the old tops leave in one trip rather than trickling out across the afternoon. Booking the bay for the whole day is the honest plan.

One of the three we are asked for most, although worktop installation is asked for more. Same template visit, same workshop, same installers either way. A converted flat is measured off the original house, so no two units in the same building have quite the same kitchen run. 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. Kitchens go in near the end of a conversion, behind the plastering and the flooring, by which point the programme has already absorbed whatever slipped earlier. 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.

Corner sinks and corner hobs sit exactly where the joint wants to be, so on an L the cut-out positions get settled before the join positions do. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. Appliance gaps are checked against the new thickness. Material runs £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting each get their own line.

A scribe has a working limit, and past twenty millimetres or so the back edge starts eating depth the run cannot spare. We would rather find it at template than on the morning, which is why the templater looks behind the units. Taking the top off is what exposes the floor. Unlock the side gate and clear the alley of bins, bikes and pots, and arrange a plumber for the sink and an electrician if the hob is hard-wired. The decision usually gets made standing in the room rather than at a desk, which is why a slab is worth viewing whole instead of choosing from a sample card. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. One day out of use, agreed in advance.

A dropped pan years later is a different question, and stone is remade rather than filled either way. Every piece is dry-assembled on the bench before it is loaded, so a fabrication mistake is found in the workshop rather than in your kitchen. Most breakages happen on the carry, which is why the route is walked and measured before anything comes off the van. 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. Whether the strip-out is a cut-up job is settled at template.

The tap hole is drilled in the workshop too, and its position depends on how far the tap has to swing. Nothing is cut out in the kitchen. Cutting a bowl on site is how worktops get cracked. We seat and seal the sink and hob on the day; water, waste, gas and electrics are for your plumber and electrician. One leg of an L is nearly always the working run and the other little more than a landing space, but both are templated, cut and edged to the same standard. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. The island top is the one that may want its own slab.

An island is where this usually shows, standing free with no wall to level against. Levelling belongs in the carcasses, on their own legs and packers. Variation past what packing can take up has to be corrected in the carcasses before we cut, because the template records the units as they stand. 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. A laminate top was scribed thin at the back to swallow it, and stone cannot be shaved down the same way. The old cut-out was hiding the notch you now need.

Two kitchens the same length can be far apart, because material, edge and cut-outs move independently of size. What is quoted is what the drawing says, and the figure does not move unless the drawing does. The edge profile is its own line, so a shaped edge and a square one are two different figures. A run can measure dead right at both ends and still belly out in the middle, which only appears once the template plots the intermediate points. It usually explains the odd filler piece or strip of beading in the existing run that nobody could account for. Levels get corrected before the new top is measured.