Worktop replacement in Cranbrook

Yes. Cranbrook is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are IG1. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Redbridge. Where the drive is shared, the half-hour the van spends in the way is agreed with the neighbour in advance rather than apologised for at the time. 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 carry happens twice here, so the distance counts twice. We come to the kitchen to template and again to fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Ceilings are high enough that an extractor over the island has a long drop, and its position is fixed before the island top is templated. These are the multi-piece jobs: long runs, a large island and often a range cooker that cannot be moved, so the stone is templated in several pieces and how the vein runs across the joins matters. The floor has dropped since the kitchen went in. Two alcove pieces will not swap over however similar they look, so they are marked left and right at the bench and stay that way to the van. 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.

A narrow entrance hall with a turn into the back of the house caps the longest piece we can physically get in, whatever the run itself measures. 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. Two carries in one day needs the route free for both. A step up from the drive to the threshold turns the last two metres into a lift, and a lift is where two pairs of hands become the minimum. 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.

Often enough. It is one of the three, behind worktop installation. The template, the workshop and the installers are the same either way. Studio and one-bed conversions put the whole kitchen against a single wall, so the job is one run and everything depends on that one length. 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. A kitchen carved out of a larger room sits under whatever the original plan left behind, so the run frequently ends at a blocked doorway or a boxed-in service. 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.

It is walked round rather than looked at from one side, so the direction the veining runs along it cannot be hidden against a wall the way it can on a perimeter run. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. The strip-out is the part worth planning. The supply-only figure for material runs £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are lines of their own.

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. 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. Have a fitter or joiner fix and level the island units beforehand, and get the sink, taps, hob and any range on site before templating so we cut to the actual appliances. An owner paying for this directly tends to want the reasoning as much as the number, so a quote that explains why a join sits where it does is worth more than a cheaper one that does not. If the carcasses are tired the honest answer is that stone will find that out, and it is better said before than after. One day out of use, agreed in advance.

If the sink or hob changes after the template, the drawing changes first and nothing is cut meanwhile. Each cut-out is priced on its own line, so a range, a bowl and a half, a boiling tap and a drainer are four items rather than one. A sit-on sink and an undermounted one are different cut-outs, so which it is gets settled before the template. Some of them overhang on two sides at once, and each side is worked out separately, because the load on an edge people lean against is not the load on an edge people walk past. Going from a 38mm laminate to 20mm or 30mm stone drops the surface, which shows against tiles, a window board and any freestanding appliance. A thinner top drops the run against the tiles.

Bleach and limescale remover harm a polished finish rather than clean it, whichever material is on the units. Topping a seal up is a wipe-on job with a cloth. No maintenance visit is built into the job. Soap, water, and on the porous stones a seal. A large villa has wide doors, a generous hall and somewhere to park, so the joins that go in are chosen for layout rather than forced by the route. Any island overhang past about 300mm will not carry weight on the carcass alone, so flat steel bar or brackets have to be let into the units first, and that is agreed at template stage, not on fit day. Whatever the shell has done since is dealt with now.

A long top on units that were shimmed once and never checked is the commonest version of this, and it is cheap to fix beforehand. Small variation is taken up by packing under the top on the fitting day. Levelling belongs in the carcasses, on their own legs and packers. Alcove pieces get cut oversize on both scribe edges, with the true wall angles carried on the template drawing rather than assumed. A laminate top was scribed thin at the back to swallow it, and stone cannot be shaved down the same way. Taking the top off is what exposes the floor.

Both are templated after the worktop is down and settled, because they are cut to the wall itself. Stone up a wall is heavier than tile and bonded rather than hung, so the wall has to be sound. A full-height piece shows a wall that is out more than an upstand does, over the extra height. These kitchens are big rooms with long perimeter runs and an island, so level has to hold across the whole floor rather than along one wall. The old island top is frequently sitting on units that were never fixed down, which is fine for laminate and not for stone. Plaster comes away with the old upstands more often than not.