Worktop replacement in Denmark Hill

Yes. Denmark Hill is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE5. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Southwark. Overhanging branches clear the roof of a car and catch the roof of a van, so the drive is looked at from the driver seat rather than from the doorstep. 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. Booking the bay for the whole day is the honest plan. The template happens in your kitchen and so does the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Floors are boards over joists with a solid floor only in the service rooms, and the two meet somewhere in the middle of the kitchen. 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. A new top on a settled run needs the run corrected first. An alcove is commonly wider at the back than at the front, so a piece cut to the opening drops in and then stands off the rear wall. 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.

A handrail that has to come off before a piece will pass is twenty minutes at the start of the day, and it goes back on the wall before we leave. 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. It sets what the day actually looks like. On a drive that only takes one vehicle nose-in, the van has to reverse the whole length of it to get back out, which decides which way it goes in. 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. Old tops out and new stone in, both through the same gap.

Not especially, and pretending otherwise would be simple enough. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation. It is a fact about the local housing rather than about the work. The job is quoted, cut and fitted the same way wherever on the patch it lands. 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. Repairable in place beats replaced whole. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. The carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. A deposit deduction rarely covers a new top.

Sockets set into the end panel keep the top clear, but they sit below the stone and are cut into the panel by the fitter rather than machined into the worktop. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. A thinner top drops the run against the tiles. Supply only, material is £110 to £550 per square metre, with templating, fabrication and fitting quoted on their own lines.

The face of a breast is rarely flat, and a top returning onto it picks up that bow across the last few hundred millimetres of its length. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. Taking the top off is what exposes the floor. 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. Where two people share the decision it helps to know early which of them is settling the edge profile and which is settling the budget, because it is rarely the same person for both. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. Out and in on the same permission.

A template on a normal kitchen takes two to three hours in the room. Templating and fitting are two visits, not one, and the gap between them is when the stone is actually cut. The template produces a drawing, and the workshop cuts to that drawing once you agree it. The old scullery is a step down from the main room and the pantry beyond it is a step down again. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the job is a day, and what makes it a difficult day is the building. An old kitchen has moved, and the stone is cut to that.

On a porous stone the grooved area is sealed with the rest, and it gets wet more than anything else. The alternative stands on the surface, so the choice is losing worktop permanently or only while you are draining. Machining is permanent. If a later kitchen moves the sink, the grooves stay where they were cut. These kitchens carry two ovens, a wine cabinet and a boiling tap, so the cut-out count runs well ahead of what the length of the runs suggests. Taking the old tops off is also the first honest look at what has been going on underneath them. The old top is heavy waste, and booked as waste.

A join cannot cross a cut-out, so a sink mid-run takes away the position you would have used. A mitred join at a corner is a different job from a butt join along a run, and they are not priced the same. A finished join is typically two to three millimetres, colour-matched and sanded flush. A pop-up socket in the surface is one more cut-out through the full thickness, and it wants the same clear space beneath it that a sink does. Going from a 38mm laminate to 20mm or 30mm stone drops the surface, which shows against tiles, a window board and any freestanding appliance. Breakfast bars get the steel they never had.

Splitting a run costs a join, and that is the price of getting stone into the room at all. A join added to get stone into the room is a different thing from a join added because the slab ran out, and the quote says which is which. Spindles and a newel cap stand proud of the string, so the usable width on a turn is measured to the handrail rather than to the wall behind it. 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. That is agreed before a plumber is booked.