Worktop replacement in Dagenham

Yes. Dagenham is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are RM9, RM10. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of the borough. Where a car has to come off the drive first, it is worth knowing whose car it is and whether the keys are in the house on the morning. 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. Booking the bay for the whole day is the honest plan. There is nothing to drive to and nothing to pick up, because both visits are to the property itself.

These were built with generous room sizes for their date, so a peninsula fits where a speculative house of the same age would not take one. The plaster is bonded straight onto the concrete, so the bottom course of tiles tends to bring plaster with it when the old top comes off, leaving a rough band behind the upstand. Plaster comes away with the old upstands more often than not. Where two pieces meet over a fall in the floor the join has to be flush to the hand as well as true to the level, because the eye reads the join and forgives the room. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. Levels get corrected before the new top is measured.

The lift is only part of the route, and the corridor from the lobby to the flat door often holds a tighter turn than the car does. 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. A laminate run comes out easier than stone goes in. A gate post set narrower than the opening looks generous from the road and stops a wide piece a metre in. We stage the strip-out so the old tops leave in one trip rather than trickling out across the afternoon. Old tops out and new stone in, both through the same gap.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop installation. A managed portfolio tends to repeat one specification across every flat, which keeps later repairs and replacements simple to order. The carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. A day, not a project. Damage in a let flat is settled as a deposit deduction, so a surface that can be repaired in place is worth more than one that has to be replaced whole. Old tops out in the morning, new stone down and sealed the same afternoon. A void week is the entire schedule.

Where the aisle is too tight the usual answer is a reduced-depth top on one side, and a 500mm run is a different cut, a different sink and a different drainer to a 600mm one. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. Joins move onto the gables this time round. Material runs £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting each get their own line.

Floors settle, and once base units are packed and levelled properly the stone sits true while everything else in the room admits it is not. We would rather find it at template than on the morning, which is why the templater looks behind the units. Same footprint, different tolerances. Sort a parking bay or permit near the entrance, confirm the lift is in service and get us the door codes, and tell us about any asbestos survey on the flat before we start stripping out. Two flats with an identical layout can want entirely different things from the same run of worktop, which is why the quote follows the run rather than the address. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. A tired carcass is said before, not discovered after.

A join sits over a cabinet gable. It never spans a gap and never runs through a cut-out. There are only ever a few legal positions, and the one taken is furthest from the light. Each join is an item on the drawing, so the layout and the figure move together. Two parallel runs with a walkway between them is the most efficient shape there is on a slab, because both pieces nest as straight lengths with almost no waste. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. The return is remeasured even where it looks unchanged.

If the sink or hob changes after the template, the drawing changes first and nothing is cut meanwhile. A boiling tap needs a hole of its own and a cupboard below for the tank, so the units change too. Two bowls means two cut-outs and a bridge of stone between them, which decides where the sink can go. A galley puts the sink on one side and the hob on the other, which spreads the cut-outs across two pieces instead of weakening one. The shape is already there to be measured, which makes the template straightforward and leaves the strip-out as the part that actually needs planning. Yield is worked out fresh for the new material.

Quartz carries resin, so a hot pan wants a trivet, while granite and sintered stone will take one without complaint. Marble is the one people underestimate. It is porous, like granite, and wants sealing. Granite is porous to varying degrees, so it is sealed when we fit it and topped up over the life of the worktop. A minority of these are non-traditional precast types, and in those the inside face of the outer wall is a panel between columns rather than a masonry wall. Anything that has to be held back goes into concrete with proper anchors rather than into a plug and a hope. The building has kept moving; the new template catches up.

The carry route is measured before anything is cut, so a piece that will not make the turn is split at the drawing stage rather than discovered on the day. Hoisting through a window is occasionally the answer, and it is a decision made at the template, not improvised on the fitting day. A rated load sounds ample until three lengths of granite and two fitters are standing on it, so the stone goes up one piece at a time. 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. Old pieces are carried out before new ones are carried in.