Worktop replacement in Cubitt Town

Yes. Cubitt Town is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are E14. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Tower Hamlets. 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. The waste run is planned, not improvised. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

A riverside block is a managed building with a booked goods lift, a loading bay and a concierge, and all three have to line up on the same day. The work is all in the building, not the kitchen. Units kept, surface changed, one day. Houses here allow a single-piece run straight through the front door, which is worth taking advantage of instead of defaulting to a joint.

This is the easiest part of the peninsula for a van, with off-street parking and driveways on many of the 1980s houses and level access to the front door. Riverside blocks are the exception, with gated courtyards and lifts sized for furniture rather than 3m slabs. 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. 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 installation, worktop templating and worktop design & quotation. 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. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. Sound carcasses or it does not go ahead. Extension kitchens are usually specified long before they are buildable, so the run lengths on the drawing and the run lengths in the room are different numbers. The carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. A day, not a project.

On a heavily veined stone the island and the run behind it are nested off the same area of slab so the movement relates across the room. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. Carcasses have to be sound first. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

Dot-and-dab plasterboard sounds solid and is hollow behind, so anything fixed through it has to hit a dab or a batten rather than a void. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. The laminate has been covering it up. Book the service lift, loading bay and concierge access for the full day, and confirm the building's permitted working hours in writing. Where someone is living in the house through the work, the strip-out and the fit are planned so the kitchen is out of use for a day and not a week. A plumber disconnects before we arrive and reconnects after we leave, and that is worth booking early. Units kept, surface changed.